The PTA’s annual report on the state of communications in Pakistan is available online here.
Of interest is that the report says Wateen Telecom’s Wimax network can support 1 million plus users, making it the largest Wimax deployment in the world – and that it is expected to launch at the end of this year.
At the present moment, Pakistan has about 79,000 broadband users – which for a country of almost 170 million remains staggeringly low. Many of these 70,000 broadband users are on 128kbps bandwidth limited connections, which isn’t broadband, as the PTA report itself points out.
My own estimate is that the true number of broadband connections in Pakistan is a fourth of PTA’s number – this is the generous estimate, and could be as low as a sixth of PTA’s number. So we’re looking at only 13,000 to 20,000 broadband connections in Pakistan! On the bright side, the report estimates that there will be 5 million broadband connections by 2010.
This is the PTA, and just to point out yet again that they still don’t quite get the internet, they’ve published the report in pdf only, and that too at a hefty 100kb per page. I estimated that the same report could easily have been a fifth of the size with a little compression. A html version would be nice too!
PTA had to exaggerate about broadband users, the numebrs are embarrasingly low.
To your other point, they should have at least published a summary in html.
Their website is broken also, the direct link to the the report redirects to the home page. I couldn’t figure out a way to directly link to the report page.
Another point about broadband – even today, in this day and age, Many companies – companies, mind you, not home users, are running on 128 kbps links to the internet.
Despite the fact what PTA is doing for the BB technology and its expansion?
@KO
The numbers mentioned in the repot for BB users are almost accurate because there were more than 25000+ DSL customers alone only in Islamabad and Rawalpindi last month out of which Micront holds the 43% (8000+ customers) of the market share followed by PTCL having more than 5000+ dsl subscriptions and so on for other operators like Comsats, Cybernet, Dancom, HRL, Multinet and Gerry’s.
The total number of users mentioned overall in Pakistan may need some revision as 6-8 months back http://www.ispak.com.pk was saying 51,000 broadband users and now after PTCL 10,000 customers for dsl servcies it would have been max at 65000 but not 70000+.
The shocking point was our neighbor India is working hard to increase BB penetration with the support of its government.
• The main fact is that there IT Telecom Ministry initiative to make computers available for purchase under 10,000 rupees (US $226)
• Today broadband usage in India is growing at 20% per month
But here in Pakistan companies are still trying to survive by offering BB services because of high priced B/W and per DSL user cost of Rs.150 to be paid to PTCL.
The report includes PTCL’s 10,000 DSL subscribers. The approx 50,000 DSL users includes a lot of 128kbps connections, which isn’t broadband, hence my estimate of 13-20,000 broadband users in Pakistan at the most.
Companies like WorldCall, Cybernet etc. do provide broadband services, but they also list customers on bandwidth capped 128kbps packages as broadband – which is not the case.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Reports only count download speeds equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s as broadband. Whereas, US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) count minimum 200 kbit/s as their definition for broadband.
By looking at these two international standard just imagine where are we standing right now? If we include all Pakistan’s corporate and individual’s (home) internet connections then there would few thousands broadband connections according to international standard. This is for the year 2007/2008.
Who to blame for all this?
1) Consumers; there is no single platform for internet users, where they can gather and launch complaints directly to executives of ISPs. Only executives make decisions, Customer Support can’t change policy. We, as consumers have much more power then we imagine because with our money ISP run their businesses. All developed countries have consumer originations that actively monitor and unitedly take actions to bend corporates (ISP).
2) Internet Service Providers; ISP executives are (always around the world) only interested in their money. Pakistani ISPs still lack high tech people to fully utilize equipment. Just for instance, ISP’s utilizing CDMA technology doesn’t have proper high tech persons for much higher speed that is easily achievable using their current equipment (they just need to adjust their equipment to utilize new protocols). Furthermore, it is impossible (because of staggering cost) to replace copper wire structure in Pakistan (thanks to PTCL’s years of investment and leading technology in this area). Therefore, Pakistani ISPs should research and invest more in wireless technologies.
3) Government; the most innocent on ground, yet the most evil policy makers (always previous government did something wrong in Pakistan). PTA always take side for corporates. It is totally opposite of what FCC do in USA. Instead of protecting consumers, PTA always protect (even hide black sheep in their reports) corporates’ entrust. Just for instance, Pakistani Government proudly sold 2 cell phone license for millions of dollars. Did anyone ever wonder how these companies are going to get back these millions of dollars? Definitely, from us (consumers). These companies will earn all investment (equipment + human resource), Frequency License Fee (millions of dollars) and their profit (many fold) from us (consumers). And we always think why India has lower cell phone and internet rates?
Umm it is not banned… i can access it.. perhaps their is some kinda technical glitch. If u want reliable service get Maxcom.
i m a disco dancer plz i give me a chance to dance in front of you plz