Wireless Local Loop (WLL) growth slowed down in 2009 significantly. In December, the overall number for WLL dropped after a long time. PTCL which has the major market share, lost 56,000 subscribers in December. Wateen, on the other hand, almost doubled its customer base to 151K . Here are the stats for 2009, from PTA.
Telecard has been in licensing disputes earlier and is now again as PTA suspends the WiMax commencement certificate of Telecard Limited. This takes Qubee’s future at stake as Qubee (brand name of Augere) for operating WiMax services uses Telecard’s spectrum and licenses. Daily times reports the details.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday suspended the commencement certificate of Telecard Limited.
The PTA took interim action in respect of their WLL licences, which were being used in conjunction with the 3.5GHz wireless spectrum by Augere Pakistan for supporting their new wireless broadband service launched in Karachi by the name of Qubee.
Here are the key highlights of the PTA Report for Pakistan telecom industry for fiscal year 2008-09 (July 2008 - June 2009) issued* on Friday.
Highlights
Cross Post from LIRNE Asia. Written by Rohan Samarajiva on October 24, 2009.
According to the ITU ICTeye, which is now carrying 2008 data, Pakistan’s surge to overtake Sri Lanka has petered out, leaving the Maldives (143 active SIMs/100 people) as the undisputed leader in mobile connectivity (apparently all adult Maldivians carry two active SIMs; there are only two operators in the Maldives), and Sri Lanka second with 52 SIMs per 100 people.
On the fixed side, assisted by CDMA phones that are counted as fixed, Sri Lanka is the leader (17 connection per 100 people), followed by Maldives (15 per 100).
Like in cricket, the middle of the rankings are the most interesting. Both Pakistan (50/100) and Bhutan (37/100) are ahead of India (29/100) in mobile. This shows that India cannot afford to let up the pace of 10 million connections a month for some time. If it does, it might be overtaken by Afghanistan (29/100) and even Bangladesh (28/100).
Of course, the fact that Afghanistan is ahead of Bangladesh in mobile penetration should cause all sorts of palpitations in government offices in Dhaka. Bangladesh was one of the earliest in South Asia to adopt mobile and is the most densely populated country in the world. How they were overtaken by Afghanistan, a war-torn country with difficult terrain, should cause serious re-examination of policies such as the BDT 800 SIM tax. The fact that Afghanistan’s CAGR for 2003-08 is 109%, higher than Bangladesh’s 2003-08 CAGR of 101%, suggests that the gap between the two countries is more likely to increase than decrease.
In the fixed rankings, we find Afghanistan occupying the cellar (0.37/100 people) behind Bangladesh (0.84/100). Pakistan (2.5/100) is behind Nepal (2.8/100). This is very surprising given the apparent superiority of the Pakistan policy and regulatory framework. Both use CDMA on the fixed access side, so that cannot be the explanation. Comments from Pakistani colleagues would be most welcome.
India is the only country showing negative growth in fixed over the 2003-08 period (-2%), but this simply because India is more honest in its reporting, counting CDMA on the mobile side instead of on the fixed side. For example Sri Lanka is experiencing negative growth in wireline, that is masked by CDMA growth.
From 2003 to 2008, the number of active SIMs has increased by over 12 times, while the number of fixed connections has decreased marginally, the negative growth in India wiping out all the gains in the rest of South Asia. South Asia is clearly the territory of the mobile.
It has been another year of mixed results for PTCL but it is clearly getting on a stable track – Rs. 9 billion profit is not bad. Because of its breadth of coverage, it can offer some interesting services – for example see their latest Double Up package, which has been criticized by other ISPs as unfair. It would get really interesting if PTCL came up with a package offer which includes wireless (voice and/or data) as well. Ufone, its mobile phone arm has shown decent performance, though it could have done better.
In summary, anyone looking for a long term investment should consider PTCL.
PTCL’s Double-Up Unlimited Package offers:
Unlimited on-net local & NWD calls include PTCL to PTCL and PTCL to Vfone.
Dawn has more on PTCL financial performance.
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited announced profit-after-tax amounting to Rs9.151 billion for the year ended June 30, which was in line with many analysts’ expectations.
Earning per share (EPS) stood at Rs. 1.79. The previous year, the telecom had drifted into loss of Rs. 2.825 billion, translating into loss per share of Re0.55.
The board did not announce a final dividend; the company having already paid an interim cash dividend at Rs1.50 per share.
Given substantial cash holdings, some analysts were looking forward to a bit of more with the final accounts.
The revenue of PTCL for the year under review stood at Rs. 59 billion, which represented 11 per cent decline over the revenue of Rs66 billion earned in FY08.
The dwindling of fixed line subscriber base was thought to be the factor in declining revenue, but sector analysts said that increase in international and broad-band revenues might have prevented a greater fall.
Not really, I am joking. But if you were to look at this screen shot from PTA site, this is what you may think about Wi-Tribe. I thought it was amusing enough to share with you all. Oh by the way there’s subscriber info about the WLL subscribers. As you can see all the customers of Wi-Trib(ut)e went on vacation from Feb to April of 2009 and magically doubled in number after that. Does anyone has a better explanation for this?
There are a number of good industry events for ICT. On the educational side, I also see good activity and wanted to share one event details which looks very promising. A Short Course on CDMA-2000 and EVDO based 3-G Cellular System is being organized at MCS on 23 May 2009. Military College of Signals (MCS) is a constituent institution of NUST and offers education in the field of Telecommunication, Software Engineering and Information Security for last many years. Registration and detailed info is here.
The training will be conducted by Dr. Syed Ismail Shah, PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, US. Dr. Shah has successfully completed the Qualcomm courses qualification in several areas of CDMA2000. He has given tutorials and training sessions on different aspects of CDMA at workshops and conferences held in various parts of the world. He is the founding member of the Pakistan CDMA forum.
This training will provide a comprehensive converge of CDMA2000 1x RTT and 1x EV-DO based 3-G Cellular Systems. These standards have been adopted for the 3G cellular wireless communication. This training will provide students and faculty an in depth understanding of the core concepts of these systems; in addition this platform will prove a opportunity to Telecomm professionals to enhance their knowledge and skills on these 3-G Cellular Systems.
We have been discussing the competitive landscape of always on wireless broadband in Pakistan. PTCL has entered this lucrative area with a soft launch of personal broadband wireless service using cdma EVDO technology. Service currently available in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Mirpur.
For customers, its the performance which matters and PTCL is claiming up to 500 to 1,000 Kbps but in reality average speeds are likely to vary from 300Kbps to 700Kbps for downlink and 200 Kbps to 400Kbps for uplink. Here’s a summary of the rates.
Package 1 (no CPE cost) – Unlimited access:
Monthly service charge: Rs.2500 (first year) and Rs. 2000 from second year onwards.
No initial charges required and the charges will be billed with PTCL landline bill.Package 2 – Unlimited access:
Initial CPE charge : Rs.4000
Monthly service charges : Rs.2000 for unlimited access
Monthly service charges will be billed with PTCL landline bill.
PTCL provides EvDO PCMCIA cards. You need a laptop with PCMCIA slot. EVDO Rev.A offers up to 3.1 Mbps downlink and up to 1.8Mbps uplink. Average speeds vary from 300Kbps to 700Kbps for downlink and 200 Kbps to 400Kbps for uplink. However it varies depending on the physical situation of the user and the network at a particular time.
Beside the initial coverage in the cities described above, consumers can also use internet in other big cities as well where there is 1900MHz network but on dialup speed (153Kbps). PTCL provides a very large coverage area where you can stay connected.
The broadband speed depends on how far you are from CDMA BTS. Either with EVDO network or CDMA 1x, you will get very good speeds if the tower is within 2 – 3 KMs radius
Recently Daily Times reported a significant increase in shift of PCOs from fixed lines to wireless. The picture below shows a PCO at Karachi airport.
Here are some details and data from the report about this shift.
Major card pay phone companies have shifted their Public Call Office (PCO) business from fixed line telephony to Wireless Local Loop (WLL) owing to its advanced technology and service portability.
This trend has been increasing in the country since the WLL technology was introduced in 2003 and still continues, as the technology has penetrated 70 percent population of the country as per Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) report.
The PCO’s business has significant share in the overall WLL subscribers’ base of the country because it is easily installed with no process of getting connection from operator’s side.
According to PTA, more than 0.44 million PCOs are operating in the country on WLL networks, which showed 16 percent growth in the year 2007-08. PCO share on fixed line network has declined from 31 percent in 2006-07 to 27 percent in the year 2007-08, whereas the rest of the business has shifted to WLL and Mobile telephony network.
Telecard has the leading share with 0.17 million PCOs across the country, which is about 8 percent higher than previous year. WorldCall has become the second big player by installing more than 24,846 PCOs. The telecom giant has posted impressive growth of 52 percent to provide PCO connections in 2007-08. Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL) has also set up 14,528 PCOs on its WLL network so far. Great Bear International has installed 1,089 PCOs in the country by the end of outgoing fiscal year 2007-08.
Mobile phone operators have also allowed providing telephony connections for PCO since the deregulation of the sector. Mobilink was the only operator, which has significantly set up its PCO on mobile telephony with more than 61,229 PCOs by June-end 2008.
PCO service is available in all the four provinces of the county which provides telephony services along with employment to million of peoples. Most of the share of PCO is concentrated in Punjab and Sindh, which are lucrative for PCOs business owing to big population. Punjab has a share of more than 53 percent with more than 0.23 million PCOs whereas Sindh has a share of 33 percent having 0.14 million PCOs. NWFP and Balochistan have more than 37,896 and 25,836 PCO’s respectively by the end of June 2008.
WLL companies are expanding the networks rapidly and are installing cell sites all across the country. In the year 2007-08, they have installed over 951 cell sites and its growth reported over 49 percent in the year 2007-08 compare to previous year. 2,897 cities are covered by the service by the same year. The overall WLL subscriber’s base stands at 2.3 million in the country with 1.5 teledensity. There are total 11 WLL operators having license of PTA but only 9 operators are operational in various telecom regions. Majority of them is coming up with 3GHz technology, which will break the digital divide in Pakistan.
PTA has published the 2007-08 annual report (download from Wiki) which has useful information and statistics about the performance of the telecom sector and the regulatory activities. Here are some previews from the report. The telecommunication sector continues to be a major source of income and foreign investment for Pakistan.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) was US$ 3.1 billion, a fall of 21% from previous year. On the positive side, there was a 33% drop in import bill of mobile handsets (US$ 446 Million), partially due to the imposed tax of Rs. 500 per handset and 50% regulatory duty. The FDI and the handset import numbers reflect the tough business and economic conditions in Pakistan.
This is the first report which has been published by the new chairman, Dr. M. Yaseen and the restructured PTA. The report has seven chapters which proivde progress report on regulation, cellular, LDI, WLL, local loop, broadband and there is a chapter for AJK and Northern Areas. Many thanks to PTA for this useful and detailed report.
Check out the PTCL site for information about all Vfone packages. The site mentions that EVDO Broadband (374Kbps+) will be launched in near future. That would be a welcome improvement.
The unlimited offer requires a Line Rent of Rs. 20 / Day (Including taxes) so it is good for those who make lots of vfone-to-vfone or vfone-to-ptcl calls. As I wrote before, it would be nice if telecom companies put a simple calculator on the site so that consumers can compare different packages and decide which one works best for them.
I am pleased to share a report on Telecom Opportunities in Pakistan. It was prepared by Salman Ansari in Aug 2007 for Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA). I am thankful to Ansari Sahib for sharing this useful report with all of us. I believe that reports like this which present the facts and highlight the progress made in the telecom sector of Pakistan are extremely valuable – especially for those who are from outside Pakistan and are looking for a compact summary of Pakistan telecom sector.
The report provides a concise and fact-based overview of the economy, telecom road map, regulatory environment, telecom infrastructure (broadband, international connectivity), licence and spectrum situation, investment landscape, mergers and acquisitions and of course – the opportunities, as the excerpt below shows:
All this signals opportunities in the Traditional and Value Added sectors for not only creating new businesses by riding on these systems but also to be a part of new licenses which are being reviewed. These include MVNO, Regional Hosting, Call Centers, Telecenters, Video Conferencing, Content aggregation, Converged networks, etc. On another plane, the Regulatory environment permits spectrum trading, Mergers and Acquisitions as well as entry via Private equity arrangements. The market opening has nearly doubled the sector revenues and this trend is expected to grow.
The annex has a list of licensed operators as well. Obviously this an evergreen document and one should keep in mind that the numbers represent Aug 2007 and have changed during the last 12 months.
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