Fiscal year 2015: Internet subscriptions up a whopping 344%

80% of growth came from 3G and 4G technology.

KARACHI:

In a strong sign that the rollout of mobile broadband technology - third and fourth generation (3G and 4G) networks - is connecting more Pakistanis to the cyber world, the country’s internet subscriptions increased by a staggering 344% to almost 17 million in fiscal year (FY) 2015, according to statistics released by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The ‘more than threefold’ increase translates to the highest growth in the country’s broadband subscriptions ever witnessed by the telecom sector in a year. The number of internet subscriptions increased from a meagre 3.8 million as of June 30, 2014 to 16.9 million at the end of FY2015.

A further breakdown of data shows that 13.5 million or 80% of the total internet subscriptions come from mobile broadband category (3G and 4G users), which means almost all of this growth came as a result of the last year’s spectrum auction for high-speed portable internet.

“It only proves that it was a pent-up demand of the past many years,” Information and Communications Technology expert Parvez Iftikhar said of the phenomenal growth in the country’s internet subscriptions. “The spectrum auction should have been held in 2008 but we kept delaying it.

“The percentage may be lower next year but I don’t see this growth slowing down,” Iftikhar said. “The service providers are still in the process of rolling out their 3G and 4G network and will continue their marketing campaigns for quite some time.”

While broadband penetration rate increased dramatically, growth of other technologies remained almost stagnant. The second and third categories were DSL and EvDO technologies representing 1.5 million and 1.3 million in the total internet subscriptions respectively. The number of EvDO subscriptions decreased by 25% from 1.8 million, its highest ever as of FY14.

The fixed-line broadband segment didn’t attract any new investment, according to Iftikhar. Nobody really invested in metro fibre or fibre-to-the-home cable networks, he said. “The government needs to make drastic reforms in fixed-line broadband because there is still a lot of potential for growth in this area.”

The fixed local line (landline phones) segment too seems to be losing presence in the telecom industry. The data for fixed-line local telephone subscribers, which totalled to three million at the end of FY13 and increased slightly to 3.2 million in FY14, wasn’t updated - an indication the growth of this segment has stagnated, if not declining.

The cellular mobile operators (CMOs)’ overall user base decreased by 18% to 114.7 million subscribers in the same period (FY2015) compared to a near-highest of 139.9 million subscribers as of June 30, 2014.

The data cleaning exercise brought down annual cellular mobile tele-density from a peak of 76.5% in FY14 to 61% at end of June this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2015.

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