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Cellphone subscriber base crosses 18 million mark

Around May the alleged figure was 10.5 million cellphone subscribers which was possibly misleading. 6 Months later, the number of subscribers is now claimed to stand at 18 million. That is phenomenal growth (or imaginative accounting). If the trend continues, land lines will soon be outmoded–a welcome change. It can’t be good news for PTCL.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Telecom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Cellphone subscriber base crosses 18 million mark”

  1. haq says:
    November 16, 2005 at 8:41 pm

    might not be that badThe growth can be attributed to the reduced cost of getting a connection these days - getting a prepaid connection is almost free and the flourishing used phone market is helping bring prices down.

    Getting an estimate on the number of active subscribers is difficult for prepaid type accounts since they don’t have a definitive active/in-active status as the article in the link above suggests. Here is a suggestion: Ask each cell phone provider to provide the number of phone-numbers used to make atleast one out-going call in the last 6 months.

    Related:

    We also had a poll earlier on the number of cell connections people had to their name. About 50% of the people said that they have 3-5 SIMS to their name. I guess what we really need is a poll that asks people how many in-active SIMS they have.

  2. halai says:
    November 23, 2005 at 12:19 pm

    From Telegeography.From Telegeography.

    There may be some truth to the numbers.

  3. haq says:
    November 27, 2005 at 11:06 pm

    ~6 million mobile activations in 4 monthsSeems like there might be truth to the numbers after all. It’ll be interesting to see if the phenomenal growth can be sustained through the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

    http://www.pakistanlink.com/Headlines/Nov05/27/09.htm

    According to CBR data, Telenor Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd collected Rs 266.3295 million as ‘activation charges’ from 0.532659 million subscribers during July-October 2005-06; Warid Telecom (Pvt) Ltd Rs 577.101 million from 1.154202 subscribers; Pak Telecom Mobile Ltd collected Rs 499.551 million from 0.999102 million subscribers; Pakistan Mobile Communication Rs 1416.426 million from 2.832852 million subscribers; Pakcom Ltd Rs 19.7465 million from 0.039493 million subscribers; and Paktel Ltd collected Rs 218.2025 million as activation charges from 0.436405 million subscribers.

  4. haq says:
    November 28, 2005 at 10:40 pm

    RE: ~6 million mobile activations in 4 monthsA little more information here:

    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C11%5C29%5Cstory_29-11-2005_pg5_5
    The total numbers of mobile phone users have crossed over 18 million mark in the country and the new subscribers are mainly from rural areas where these companies have been able to establish their network for providing their services. The addition of new subscribers into the mobile phone companies network was due to the continuous reduction in the activation charges and mobile phone call charges during the past few months and expansion of the network in the areas where demand still exists.

    The mobile phone operators who have recently started their operations in the country are also getting good response from the subscribers.

    The mobile phone operators were aggressively expanding their networks in remote areas of the country and few million more new subscribers were expected to be added in the next two years taking the total number to more than 30 million in the country, the official said.