The telecom sector, one of the fastest developing sectors in Pakistan, is expected to grow in the coming years.
With the efficient economic policies of the government, the telecom sector of the country has witnessed a stupefying growth in the past seven years, said Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf on 26th of March 2007. He added that today, many national and international telecom companies are focusing on Pakistan for making investments. With the well-planned telecom policy, an extraordinary amount of foreign investment was influxed to this sector. This telecom policy was prepared after thorough discussions with the stakeholders, says the news published on Associated Press of Pakistan.
In Pakistan, telecom is one of the fast developing sectors. The combined teledensity of Pakistan increased from 4.5% to about 40% of the total population. Also, there was an increase in the number of subscribers for mobile and fixed telephony. This was 8 million in the year 2003 but increased to a whopping over 50 million in the year 2006. It is expected that this will reach 80 million in coming 2-3 years.
The cellular subscriber base of Pakistan has registered a 154.26% jump during 2005-2006 as compared to the fiscal of 2003-04. With the decrease in the cost of the handsets, there is a rapid increase in the demand for mobile phones. This took Pakistan on fifth rank in the listing of the world's largest telecom market.
Mobilink, which is considered to be Pakistan's most favorite cellular service provider, remains the all time favorite for the people. With the introduction of the value added features like GPRS and MMS, the demand for this provider is on the rise and now it has more than 9 million customers who make use of this prepaid cellular brand. This growing number has attracted international players who think that Pakistan is a lucrative market.
According to the research analyst at RNCOS, the reduction in the cost of the handsets will add new subscribers, especially from the rural areas. However, like that of the saturated markets, if the mobile operators want to avoid just competing on price, they need to compete on excellent service and innovative features.
Related Market Research Reports:
Global Mobile TV Forecast to 2010
African Mobile Market Forecast (2007-2011)
European Mobile Market Scenario to 2012
