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In a seminar on "The Future of Mobile Communications in Pakistan" recently, Dr Muhammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said that data usage is increasing in Pakistan and proliferation of broadband services will help in the establishment of information society. The Pakistan telcos are gearing up for the new era of mobile telephony and are focussing toward a future of more value addition and innovation in services including mobile commerce, video streaming, and high speed mobile Internet.

Yaseen pointed out that the highly priced broadband services might be a bit on the steep due to a lesser rise in the user base, which stands at 1.14 lakh users as on December 2007. But the increase in number of users in the past quarter and the surveys conducted by the PTA show that the initial introduction of mobile communications has increased the productivity significantly.

Presently, mobile coverage is available for are getting added over 90% of the population. Around 2 mn subscribers every month an increase of 40% in the mobile subscriber base over last year. The first mobile commerce conference recently held in Karachi was another sign that the ICT industry in Pakistan is maturing. The event saw all the key people of Pakistan's communication industry, leading banks, and foreign companies. The conference was well planned and topics such as environment for mobile commerce, role of telcos, micro-finance, security and risk management, new trends, and challenges were extensively discussed.

Mobilink in July announced the introduction of mobile commerce services called Mobilink Genie, in association with the country's leading financial institutions like Inov8, CitiBank, KASB, Atlas Bank and Adamjee Insurance. This service allows subscribers to pay utility bills, including electricity, gas, and telephone, apart from paying or recharging their Mobilink bills. According to Mobilink all payments and transactions are required to follow.

Source: farm4.static.flickr.com

In India regulators are still holding on to the regulation of bill payment by only telcos. The draft guidelines are yet to be made by the RBI, as it is still in the process of regulating the business. And banks, on RBI's orders, have stopped the little m-commerce that was allowed.

Not only mobile commerce, Pakistan is even going strong to mend the rules of its broadband industry. Although the total number of broadband subscribers is comparatively higher than in rest of the cities, the overall penetration is 0.319% and 0.48%, respectively, which implies that even the major cities are not optimally served. Pakistan is looking at reduction in its broadband prices which would lead to increased penetration. The recent focus of the PTA has been the broadband sector and the proliferation of broadband services in the country at affordable rates, and with the implementation of the USF project, a larger population would be able to use the services.

Complete fairness will be maintained in the USF framework, in order to minimize any market distortion through subsidy intervention by the Fund. For USF Broadband framework, The government of Pakistan maintains the continuity of policy adopted for 14 Local Loop regions, LDI and integrated licenses that are fully established and already in place.

The PTA is also aware of the worldwide developments on 3G and is moving toward starting 3G services. Apart from China, smaller countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal have come out with their 3G services. Pakistan already has the spectrum earmarked and all the ground-work has been completed. PTA will soon invite applications for 3G spectrum auction. PTA said that the Ministry of IT&T is being consulted on the final procedures of 3G licensing. The PTA chairman said availability of the 3G spectrum would help operators increase their capacity and revenue by deploying state-of-the-art HSPA technology whereas the users would enjoy high quality mobile broadband services enabling them to avail facilities of video telephony, high speed, Internet, video streaming, high quality mobile TV and a number of value added services.

Presently, India is struggling with its 3G bid which seems to have gone for a never-ending wait. Having a much higher telephony penetration than Pakistan and many other nations, yet we tend to lag behind when it comes to implementation of processes and technologies. India needs to take a stand and work out regulations at a faster pace.

Sunny Sen
sunnys@cybermedia.co.in