Amid increasing demand, broadband subscriptions up 7%

Growth due to rollout of 3G, 4G networks; mobile broadband users clock in at 14.6m

KARACHI:

The telecommunication boom in the country continues to reach new highs as latest numbers show Pakistan’s total broadband subscription has surpassed 18 million with mobile internet penetration touching 13% at the end of July, according to statistics released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The number of broadband connections in the country increased 7% to 18 million compared to 16.9 million in the preceding month, according to the PTA. Almost all of this growth is due to the rollout of high-speed mobile internet: third-generation (3G) and 4G networks.



The number of 3G and 4G users reached 14.6 million in the month of July, constituting 81% of the country’s total broadband subscriber base, data shows. This translates to an increase of 8.3% over 13.5 million of the preceding month.

The cellular mobile operators’ (CMOs) overall user base, which decreased by 18% to 114.7 million subscribers in fiscal year 2015 amid the biometric verification drive, also showed signs of recovery in the first month of current fiscal year.

The number of cellular subscribers increased 1.5% to 116.4 million at the end of July, indicating the impact of the verification drive or data cleaning has now vanished. The data cleaning exercise had brought down annual cellular mobile teledensity from a peak of 76.5% in FY14 to 61% at the end of June this year.

Market share

The market positions of the five operators, however, remained the same as Mobilink ended at the top with 34 million subscriptions at the end of July followed by Telenor Pakistan, which finished second with 32.5 million users in the same period.



China Mobile Pakistan (Zong), Ufone and Warid were third, fourth and fifth with 22 million, 18 million and 10 million users, respectively.

The mobile broadband category was dominated by Telenor Pakistan, which boasted over 4.7 million 3G users at the end of July, up 13% compared to 4.2 million of the previous month. It was followed by Mobilink that increased its 3G users by over 8% to almost 4 million compared to 3.7 million of the preceding month.



Zong remained third in the mobile broadband with 3 million users on its 3G network and 132,502 on the 4G platform. Ufone’s 3G user base improved slightly to 2.6 million while Warid boasted 121,602 users on its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network at the end of July.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th,  2015.

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