Archive for May 22nd, 2008

Mobile Phone Users In Pakistan Gain From Telecom Advances

Published by Babar Bhatti on May 22, 2008 under Digital Divide, ICT, Investment, Mobile Companies, Pakistan, Research, Telecommunications

This story is based on work from the impressive research team at LIRNEAsia. I am sharing two interesting results from the 39-page presentation which higlight the benefits (increaes in earnings, efficiencies, savings) for Pakistani telecom users, relative to other Asian countries. This work serves as another good answer to the questions raised about the link between rise of SIMs in Pakistan and benefits to the nation. Overall I think we had a decent first phase of telecom growth but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

There are downsides to this rapid growth as well but mostly these are either intangible or hard to measure as they mostly relate to society and ethics. Perhpas social scientists will publish some results on these aspects too.

Note: This work was presented at the International Conference on Information, Communication and New Media & the First Annual Convention of the Information and Communication Association of Taiwan.