Telecom News Bulletin

The telecommunications sector continued to show impressive growth in 2009 as teledensity climbed to 63.5 per cent, mainly led by the cellular industry.

According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s data, the cellular industry continued to show subscriber growth in 2009, albeit slower than previous years, as users grew by 9 per cent to a record of 97.6 million. China mobile led the way, with subscribers growing 26 per cent from previous year, followed by Telenor (16 per cent) and Warid Telecom (11 per cent).

In absolute terms, Telenor came on top with new 3.1 million subscribers, followed by Mobilink 2.3 million and Warid 2 million. Overall, mobile phone operators fared well in 2009, with total addition of 7.7 million subscribers pushing teledensity to 59.6 per cent. As far as the market share is concerned, Mobilink was on top with 32 per cent while Telenor closed in the gap with 23 per cent. Warid and Ufone followed with market share of 19.3 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. Interestingly, China Mobile enhanced its share to 7.1 per cent, 22 months after its launch. Wireless local loop (WLL) sector continued to add to its customers with users jumping by 15 per cent while broadband subscribers reached 587,000 in November 2009.

WLL subscribers rose to 2.7 million, up from 2.3 million at the start of 2009. The growth is somewhat reflective of increasing preference of users to switch to WLL from fixed line where the subscribers dropped. As far as the market share is concerned, the PTCL continued to lead the way with a 46 per cent share of the pie while Telecard and Worldcall had 24 per cent and 21 per cent respectively. Broadband subscribers grew by an impressive 42 per cent in the first five months of the current fiscal year, up to 587,000 as of Nov 09 from 414,000 as of end June.

DSL technology continued to be the preferred option accounting for 59 per cent of the total connections. Wimax connections grew by an impressive 88 per cent in the five months till Nov 09, with Wateen and Mobilink being major operators.

Moreover, the popularity of the recently launched EvDo technology has escalated, which is evident from the increasing subscribers, which have jumped to 38,000 as of Nov 09. 2009 proved to be an impressive year despite the difficult economic environment.

Although, cellular growth is expected to slow down going forward, as it is getting tougher to add new subscribers, broadband offers tremendous growth potential. PTA expects broadband users to rise to 4.35 million by 2013.