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Roshan has very swiftly taken the lead in Afghanistan's telecom space. You have crossed 3 mn subscribers, with 1 mn customers being added in the past six months. What will be your strategy to maintain the lead?

At Roshan, we work hard to understand our subscribers, focusing on how to acquire and retain new subscribers. Last year, we segmented our main product portfolio; and currently offer targeted products for youth, corporate, and the mass market. This includes a new plan called 'Yaraan', meaning 'best friend' of the youth.

Our strategy is simply to maintain a high-quality network, and to continue to bring unique products and services to the market that meet both the basic and unique needs of the Afghan population. What sets us aside is our focus on network quality and being a product innovator. Recent brand research validated that over 80% of the subscribers see Roshan as 'a company always on the verge of innovative ideas'.

We will continue to build on our extensive sales and distribution network to ensure that all Afghans have access to Roshan products and services. We are committed to staying at the forefront of product and technical innovation, with products like M-Paisa; and will continue to grow our value added service offerings.

Roshan has set a great example with the launch of M-Paisa. What do you think are the applications that will further lead to a greater adoption of this service?

In Afghanistan, over 97% of the population does not have access to a traditional bank account, or to financial services; one of the lowest percentages in the world. Afghanistan's mobile phone penetration rate stands at 25%, and is growing rapidly. Far more people have the potential to access the mobile commerce services than traditional banking services. Therefore, we saw this as a unique opportunity to use mobile phones to secure financial inclusion for all Afghans. Roshan launched M-Paisa-a mobile money transfer service-for peer-to-peer transfer, repayment of micro finance loans, airtime purchase, salary disbursement, and bill payments.

The experience with the service has been very positive till date. We have developed a number of partnerships with the various micro finance institutions to ensure that all Afghans can access credit, no matter where they live. We also completed a trial with the Afghan national police (ANP), through which forty-nine ANP received their salaries through M-Paisa in Wardak.

Traditionally, salaries were passed through multiple hands, where there was a heightened risk of robbery and skimming. Now,the officers visited an authorized M-Paisa agent to withdraw their salary, or could send it through the mobile phone. The officers were shocked to learn that they were earning what they were earlier. You cannot underestimate the impact that an extra $50 can have on a family struggling to survive. We will continue to explore newer applications in this space.

Per-second billing has unleashed one of the bloodiest tariff wars in India. What impact has per-second billing had on the Afghanistan telecom industry?

In Afghanistan, one of our competitors entered the market with per-second billing. When our other competitor also made the switch to per-second-billing, we decided to go down that route. From our perspective, moving to per second billing had a 30% negative impact on revenues for the whole industry. Given the stage of growth of the telecommunications industry, it was too early to move to this pricing model and, therefore, had an impact on the overall development and rollout of the services.

Ultimately, we see that price reductions is good for the consumer, as it really helps the market to open up. Through per-second-billing, the entry barriers have been reduced, and it has really allowed us to penetrate to the bottom of the pyramid.

However, it is important that the cost structure of the operation has evolved to the point that it can support such customers from a business perspective.