An interesting news item at Daily Times reports Pakistan has 10.54 million mobile phone users as of Apr 30, 2005. This is almost double the number of fixed telephone lines in the country and also explains the recent move by PTCL to offer free phone setup (previous story).
PTCL’s Executive VP, Mashkoor Hussain’s comments also explain the move by PTCL (which has a monopoly on fixed lines) to offer free connections:
“We have over 5 million subscribers in the country, We achieved this during the last 50 years but now we have a target to give two million more connections till December 2005.”
Other intersting market metrics from the article: the annual mobile phone market is growing at a staggering 120% anually. At present Mobilink leads the market share with 6.45 million subscribers, followed by Ufone with 2.2 million, Instaphone with 524,852 and Paktel with 308,629 subscribers. Norwegian company Telenor has attracted 653,170 customers in just two months.
2 million in 1 year?I just realized, they have 5 million subscribers at present and that took them 50 years which amounts 100,000 per year. They can’t possibly be serious about adding 2 million in a year, which is 20 times their current growth rate. Besides, one would expect that after 50 years the demand for fixed lines would be stagnated.
What they really need to do is offer really cheap calling to mobile phones in conjunction with their current free line setup (and subsidized phonesets). Seeing that the mobile phone market is growing so rapidly, it is only a matter of time before mobile phone carriers start offering very cheap in-network calls (to lock out the competition and to promote in-breeding). PTCL needs to foresee this move which will dramatically reduce their present fixed line usage and won’t offer much incentive for ppl to get new fixed lines.
Where is Warid?When Telenor was launching I heard that Warid would start operations first week of May. So far have not heard from them. Anyone know what they are up to? I’ve heard they will have killer call rates.
might be possibleInter-network calls are already pretty cheap. Mobilink to Mobilink is about a
rupee per minute (though they charge alot of tax on that rupee). Most mobile phone providers also offer a nation-wide flat rate to land lines as-well.
I would not be suprised if PTCL gets their mark of 2 million subscribers
by the end of the year. Installing fixed copper lines was very costly
and high maintainance. I’d bet they are going to introduce wireless
telephony (similar to GO-CDMA) to the less densely populated areas.
Very cheap to setup when compared to fixed lines. The only thing they will have to worry about is the competion from the other mobile / telephony companies.
Mobilink to Mobilink is notMobilink to Mobilink is not a rupee a minute. My last bill says its 2.75 Rs. plus taxes. Taxes add up to a further 1/3 of whatever the total bill is, so that makes it Rs. 3.66. For Jazz users its 5 rs plus taxes last I checked.
who win Insta CDMA projectPakistan first Mobile CDMA operator Instaphone my question is who win the bid for tht project ericsson or ZTE.