Penetration goes over 13%, number up 8% in August.
PHOTO: FILE
Pakistan’s mobile broadband subscriptions reached 15.8 million at the end August, 2015, taking the country’s mobile internet penetration over 13%, statistics from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed on Monday.
The number of mobile broadband connections in the country increased by 8% to 15.7 million in August compared to 14.6 million of the preceding month as the five cellular operators added more than 1 million new connections to their third-generation (3G) and 4G networks.
The cellular mobile operators (CMOs)’ overall user base - which decreased by 18% to 114.7 million subscribers in fiscal year 2015 because of the (Jan-March) biometric verification drive or data cleaning exercise - continued to grow during the month.
Read: Amid increasing demand, broadband subscriptions up 7%
After a slight recovery to 116.4 million in July, the cellular industry’s total user base increased by 2.5 million to finish just under 119 million at the end of August, translating to an increase of 110 basis points in the annual cellular teledensity, which stood at 62.5%.
In the mobile broadband category, Telenor Pakistan continued to dominate the sales, adding more than 395,000 users to its 3G network during August, sustaining its lead in the category with over 5 million 3G users.
China Mobile Pakistan (Zong) wasn’t far behind as it added more than 350,000 users to its 3G and 4G networks during the review period, taking its total mobile broadband user base above 3.5 million subscriptions.
Mobilink, which boasts the second highest number of 3G users, was able to add over 74,000 subscriptions to its mobile broadband network and had 4 million 3G users at the end of August. Warid Telecom sold more than 18,000 long term evolution (LTE) or 4G connections during the month to finish at almost 140,000 broadband subscriptions.
Read: Broadband subscriptions increase by 18%
The market positions of the five operators, however, remained the same on overall basis. Mobilink ended at the top with 34.6 million subscriptions (both 3G and 2.5G) at the end of August followed by Telenor Pakistan, which finished second with 32.7 million users in the same period.
China Mobile Pakistan (Zong), Ufone and Warid were third, fourth and fifth operators with 23.1 million, 18.3 million and 10.2 million users, respectively.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2015.
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