State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Ministry of IT and Telecom has been working on the broadband woes in Pakistan. MoITT published a study on this topic which is available here. This summary of broadband situation in Pakistan discusses the issues and suggested a few approaches to resolve the problem. MoITT has been soliciting comments from public and industry  — the question posed is: Is Entire Pakistan Underserved in Broadband Penetration? Yes Of Course! Rest are details but the simple answer is Yes.

On Feb 8 a discussion took place at Islamabad Club where the Minister of IT and other stake holders participated. This conference in Islamabad was continuation of the “Fix Broadband” theme. When talking about broadband problems, comparison and references to the steep increase in teledensity in last 5 years are often made. Tariq Mustafa, one of the industry veterans and blogger, shares some interesting thoughts at Telecom Grid Pakistan. Tariq points out that even if wireless broadband is the ultimate winner in context of Pakistan and other emerging economies, there is still a large wired infrastructure required to support it. Another avenue which has been pushed is the utilization of Universla Services Funds for broadband.

Another interesting angle of  supply vs demand is raised by Tariq Mustafa. He asks:
“do we have compelling applications that will drive the growth riding this gap?”

This question is important if you talk about real broadband. But here we are talking about 256K speeds so I still feel that if the prices are reasonable the new generation will be quick to take the bandwidth and given the demographics that can be significant.

Ok if you still want to get into the supply and demand - here are 2 applications: telecommuting and offshore work.

Readers - let us know how much you would be willing to pay for broadband and what applications or usage scenario will justify that expense?

An optimistic point of view, reported at WiMAX.com.

According to Juniper Research, half of all mobile WiMAX subscribers will be located in Asia by the year 2013. This half will account for roughly 40 million subscribers concentrated mostly in Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan and Australia.

The reason? It is believed that WiMAX’s growth will initially be spurred by areas where wired access was not a viable option. WiMAX’s ability to deploy quickly and efficiently in areas that were previously underserved will make it an attractive option for such countries and locales.

Top markets for 2013, according to the research, include the United States, Japan and South Korea. The caveats? Spectrum and devices. In order to reach a potential 80 million subscribers licenses must be acquired in a timely fashion. Furthermore, in order to utilize the WiMAX network, WiMAX-enabled devices will be an obvious necessity. Future projections on the success of WiMAX are hinged on these two elements. Therefore, as more spectrum is allocated and more devices are developed the likelihood of these future projections will continue to increase.

I wrote about Link dot net a while ago while reviewing the WiMAX situation in Pakistan. This week Link dot net has launched in Pakistan with the usual media blitz. Tee Emm writes at Telecom Grid Pakistan about this new player and what it means for consumers. Kashif Aziz also wroteon Chowrangi.com about this new player in Pakistan broadband market. Kashif writes that “Operating from Lahore, LinkdotNet Pakistan offers broadband Internet through DSL and WiMAX technologies for the Home and Corporate users along with the traditional Dialup Internet. “

Lets wait till the service gets operational and covers the major cities. It will be interesting to see if consumers actually benefit from this. If all goes well the broadband penetration rate may get a much needed boost.