Getting connected

There are now 26.3 million mobile broadband connections which is a startling six per cent increase since November

Connecting Pakistan to the internet has been a painfully slow process, but there are now indications that connectivity generally, and not just through PCs and laptops, is rising significantly, courtesy of smart mobile devices and the rollout of 3G services. The number of broadband subscriptions has now passed the 25 million mark. The cellular service providers had a bumper month in December 2015 when they sold more than 1.5 million high-speed mobile internet connections, this according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. There are now 26.3 million mobile broadband connections which is a startling six per cent increase on the previous month, November. Whether such levels of growth are sustainable remains to be seen, but the figures suggest that Pakistan is becoming more connected by the month.

Other technologies such as DSL, WiMax and Fibre-to-the-home were measured as stagnant in the same monitoring period, another indicator of the primacy of the mobile phone over all other types of internet connection. Mobile internet users now account for one-fifth of cellular users nationally. This number can only continue upwards as saturation is yet distant. There are around 200 million people in Pakistan and about 13 per cent of them are now net-connected. Some of the implications of this explosion in connectivity are not immediately obvious and bear closer examination. There have been widespread anecdotal reports of mobile phone usage, particularly in rural areas, leading to a rise in limited literacy, with people of no formal education using Urdu and Roman Urdu scripts to communicate via SMS services. How this might be capitalised by expanding their literacy via an online connection is yet to be explored. There is also considerable evidence that retail sales via the internet have grown in rural areas. Whilst the numbers are interesting, it is the underlying social changes — and benefits — that mark the humble ‘mobile’ as a major change agent for rich and poor alike in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th,  2016.

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