Telecom sector: Demand for 3G surges as subscribers near 10 million

Number of broadband users increases by 58% in January 2015

KARACHI:

The telecom sector increased the number of mobile broadband subscriptions by a staggering 58% over the previous month as the overall subscriber base stood just shy of 10 million at the end of January 2015, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said on Monday.

The total number of third-generation (3G) subscriptions increased to 9 million at the end of January, up 58% compared to 5.7 million in December 2014, according to the statistics released by the telecom regulator.

Telenor Pakistan is leading the mobile broadband market with 2.7 million subscriptions as of January 31, 2015, up 20% from 2.2 million 3G users in the previous month.

It was followed by Ufone that had 2.2 million subscriptions at the end of January, up 15% from 1.7 million in December.

Mobilink’s 3G user base increased by 21% to 2.1 million compared to 1.7 million in the previous month. Zong had 1.8 million 3G connections at the end of January, up 11% from 1.6 million in the previous month.



The number of 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE) subscribers soared to almost 50,000 at the end of January, up 1865% from 2,242 in December 2014.

The steep surge in the number of 4G users was driven by Warid Telecom whose statistics were made public for the first time by the PTA since the launch of service late last year.

Warid Telecom had 44,075 LTE users while Zong had 5,023 4G users at the end of January.

If the number of GSM or 2G users is also taken into account, the telecom industry’s overall subscriber base increased by 50 basis points or 0.5% to 136.4 million in January compared to 135.7 million in the previous month. This number certainly doesn’t include the number of subscriptions that have been deactivated or blocked as part of data cleaning and the ongoing biometric verification process, which started in January.

The number of subscribers will decline significantly in the next two to three months in the wake of the government’s instructions to verify 103 million subscribers in 90 days, ending April 13 this year. February and March will see a sharp drop in the total number of cellular consumers, sources say.



As per current statistics, Mobilink retains its position as the market leader with 38.3 million (2G and 3G) users as of January 2015. Telenor Pakistan is the second largest cellular operator with 36.5 million users followed by Zong with 27.4 million subscribers. With 21.7 million subscriptions, Ufone remains at number four while Warid Telecom remains the smallest operator with 12.3 million users.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2015.

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