The ongoing fiscal year has brought about mixed fortunes for various sectors of the telecom industry - while the mobile telephony sector has remained under stress, the LDI telephony sector has been mostly gleeful. But the overall industry performed better between July 2011 and June 2012, as seen in the statistics released by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority in Annual Report 2012, last week.
The PTA Report shows that the telecom revenues (of all segments) totalled Rs411.4 billion during FY12, showing a healthy YoY growth of 13.3 percent. Encouragingly, the share of data revenues had increased to 16.4 percent of the revenues, compared to 13.7 percent in FY11. Datas share in revenues was nine percent for the mobile network operators, and 31.7 percent for the local loop operators.
The revenue growth meant that the sectors contribution to the national exchequer also rose in FY12. The sector provided Rs132.5 billion in taxes and fees, more than the Rs117 billion in FY11. Some Rs57 billion were collected through GST/FED (levied on airtime usage at 19.5 percent), and Rs7.5 billion were received through Sim activation tax. The report notes that telecom is the largest contributor from the services sector in GST collection.
More than $12 billion is estimated to have been invested in the local telecom infrastructure and technologies in the last seven years, which has expanded provision of telecom services to over 90 percent of the population, according to PTA. However, fresh investment within the sector dropped to $240 million in FY12, compared to $493 million in FY11.
Meanwhile, FDI in telecom was reported at negative $361 million for FY12, compared to $79 million the previous year. Slow economic growth and capital outflows by some telecom companies are cited as major reasons behind this decline.
Amid negative foreign inflows in the sector, it didn help that the telecom imports touched almost a billion dollar in FY12, showing 25 percent growth YoY. That growth is fuelled by the imports of mobile handsets - both low-cost Chinese mobiles and high-end smartphones.
It was the mobile telephony segment that performed much better during the period under review. The cellular subscriptions crossed 120 million with 11 million new users added as of June end last year. The cellular subscription pie is still dominated by the pre-paid segment, as post-paid accounted for only 1.6 percent of total subscriptions.
At the end of June 2012, the mobile tele-density stood at 68.3 percent in Pakistan. The highest penetration was reported in Sindh at 84 percent, followed by Punjab at 68.1 percent, KP 46.2 percent, and Balochistan 45.9 percent. The MNOs expanded their networks during the period, as seen in the number of cell sites which grew by 8.4 percent YoY to reach 33,920 as at June end last year.
The mobile network operators earned nearly Rs300 billion in revenues, showing a 14 percent growth YoY. The average revenue per user also grew by 2.6 percent YoY to reach Rs214.8 per month in FY12, as both the voice and data segments showed impressive gains.
The voice segment was supported by rising traffic in the wake of low tariffs. The cellular voice calls landing on cellular networks reached 193 billion minutes, showing a 40 percent growth over previous year. However, the cellular traffic landing on fixed lines dropped by over 10 percent to 2.6 billion minutes. Each subscriber averaged making 141 minutes of voice calls per month, compared to 114 minutes per month in FY11.
The heavy texting trend continues. Pakistanis sent a record 277.7 billion sms in FY12, which is 25 percent more than previous year. That averages to 200 sms sent by each subscriber in a month.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.