Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) leads all operators in wireline broadband category of 1 Mbps quality of service survey (QOS) conducted by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). PTCL is placed in category A at Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta and in category B at Karachi. According to a statement of PTA for 1Mbps broadband package of wireless broadband service providers, Wateen Telecom has been placed in category A at Lahore and Rawalpindi and category B at Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. Similarly, Qubee and WorldCall are also in category A at Lahore and category B at Karachi and Wi-Tribe is in category B at Rawalpindi.
PTA carried out the second nationwide broadband QOS survey of all wireless and wireline service providers throughout the country during the third and fourth quarter of 2011. During the survey the already devised QoS Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in consultation with services providers were measured. KPIs were network availability, service availability, download and upload bandwidth speed, how much data a subscriber can receive or send to the maximum, round-trip time, the time taken for the data to reach a particular destination and return, contention ratio, the ratio of total bandwidth and number of subscribers or number of subscribers per unit of bandwidth and retain ability, for how much time a connection remained connected during the period of 60 minutes. The higher the bandwidth of download or upload speed and retain-ability and lower the round trip time and contention ratio, the higher is service quality.
Government is trying to expand Internet access throughout the country; there is direct digital Internet connectivity in more than 2,389 cities and towns. Customers are able to access Internet through legacy dial-up connections as well as DSL services in both fixed and wireless media. To promote broadband Internet services, PTA directed PTCL to enter into agreements with ISPs for the provision of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. Currently, there are seven major players providing broadband facilities in the country both fixed and wireless including PTCL, Micronet, Link Dot Net, WorldCall, Wi-tribe, Qubee and Wateen.
Pakistan’s broadband market has a lot of growth potential as so far the broadband penetration rate is quite low – only one per cent to be precise – but on the other side the growth rate of broadband penetration has been 150 per cent consistently for the last few years. The number of broadband subscribers was over 1.7 million till October 2011. Telecom sector in Pakistan has shown significant growth in the recent years. However, it still lags behind many of its comparable economies in terms of fixed line density, mobile penetration and internet usage. A substantial population is still devoid of telecommunication services; there is an enormous potential for growth of telecommunications in the country. Pakistan currently has over 111 million cellular subscribers. The number of subscribers has increased more than fifteen times in the past seven years but there is still high demand for cellular services in the country. The start of operations by Ufone in 2001, and Telenor and Warid in 2005 facilitated growth in number of subscribers.
