SOURCE: PAKISTAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY
KARACHI:
Pakistan’s telecommunications industry recorded 35% growth in the use of Short Messaging Services (SMS) – the industry’s most important revenue base – during 2011. On the flip side, however, SMS-based revenues fell by 45% in the same year, according to statistics released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
A total of 237.6 billion SMS were generated by the industry in 2011 – the latest year for which data has been released. This is a 35% increase from the 175.4 billion SMS the industry generated in 2010.
The telecom industry earned Rs12.4 billion during 2011 through its SMS base, down 45% from the Rs22.5 billion it earned in the previous year. This amount includes revenues from person to person (P2P) SMS, multimedia messaging services (MMS), applications to persons (A2P) and persons to applications (P2A).
The decline of revenues came on the heels of a price war among the country’s five mobile operators, according to Furqan Ayub, a telecom analyst at JS Global Capital. Prices for the service were certainly higher in 2010 than they were in 2011, he said.
PTA, on the other hand, attributes the growth in the SMS base mainly to two factors – exponential growth in mobile subscribers and falling SMS prices and SMS ‘bundle’ offers.
SMS rates have dropped by 50% during the past five years, according to PTA’s statistics. Owing to the trend, demand and competition in the market, the price of ‘bundled package offers’ has gone down to as low as Re1 to Rs1.50 per 100 SMS per day, the report said.
PTA’s report, dated December 11, 2012, analyses data for SMS, MMS and other value added services over SMS up to December 31, 2011, when Pakistan’s total mobile subscriptions stood at 113 million. Subscriptions have surpassed the 121 million mark by the end of 2012.
Of the total number of SMS sent in 2011, the report said, a staggering 236.85 billion were P2P text messages. P2P messages are the most popular use of SMS in the country and the main contributor to SMS-based revenues for the industry. Around 89.8% of total revenues were from P2P SMS, the report adds.
A single mobile phone consumer, according to the report, generated an average of 175 P2P text messages in a month during 2011 against 142 SMS per subscriber per month during 2010. The report also informs that 430 million SMS were sent to international destinations during the period reviewed.
In its analysis of SMS-based traffic, PTA maintains that SMS is one of the most popularly used medium of transferring data in Pakistan to date. The revenues generated by SMS are quite higher than other data and MMS revenues, it says. This is because the per SMS rate is almost negligible in bundled packages, as compared to flat (non-bundled) rates which are still comparatively higher.
This segment of mobile business is gaining momentum with every passing day, the report said. In addition to being a useful application for consumers, short messaging has great economic potential for operators, it said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 17th, 2013.
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