KARACHI (February 13 2007): Three Middle Eastern and Far Eastern Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are taking position to launch their operations in Pakistan with an aggregate investment of $150 million. Sources said that two of the companies would be launching their full-fledge operations while on of the companies would be acquiring an existing ISP.

The intending companies have already applied for the licenses and hopefully, the licenses would be awarded by the end of these years. Each of the ISPs would be investing $50 million to kick off their service in Pakistan, which is expected to be started within two years.

Sources further informed that these intending ISPs are already preparing the feasibility reports and assessing the market. Invent of these service providers would generate direct employment for at least 5,000 people.

It was also learnt that all these three ISPs would start their operations simultaneously at 90 destinations throughout the country. The country is quite underdeveloped as far as Internet penetration is concerned.

According to the latest data available the Internet penetration stands at 8.0 percent with around 15 million Internet users. However, the current penetration would be doubled within next four to five years, as some 12 million users would be added during this period.

Presently, around two dozen ISPs are operating in the country with 128Kbps bandwidth benchmark, which is quite thin as compared to the developed countries even India is far ahead in this technology.

However, according to sources, these new ISPs planning to operate at 512Kbps bandwidth would spark the competition between the service providers and resultantly 512Kbps bandwidth would be set as the benchmark.

The Middle Eastern and Far Eastern ISPs would be providing DSL, Hybrid Fibre Coil (HFC) and wireless broadband excess to suit the requirements of all quarters of the society.

Sources informed that these firms were preparing feasibility reports and assessing their target market to avoid the consequences faced by the existing ISPs, which could not register big success stories, as they lacked proper study and knowledge of the target markets and user requirements.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2007