Teledensity Surge

The numbers for teledensity in July 2009 are in and are inline with the trend seen in the past few months. According to the PTA, the teledensity in Pakistan stood at 62.3percent. While the contribution from fixed line and Wireless Local Loop remained constant at 2.2 percent and 1.6percent, respectively, the cellular services accounted for 58.5 percent, up from 57.4 percent in June.
The total number of subscribers grew by 1.28 percent in the first month alone of this fiscal year, compared to a growth of 7 percent in the entire previous fiscal year. The increase in cellular teledensity highlights some of the changes occurring in the telecom sector. Firstly, the case of unregistered SIMs may be finally coming to a close. The PTA set March 31st as the deadline and by July over 10 million un-registered SIMs had been blocked and unregistered or mis-registered SIMs are now gradually being put out of use. This action has been showing results in the previous couple of months and particularly in July.
This phenomenon may have had the biggest effect on Mobilink that has, despite previously displaying a falling trend, gained 1.42 percent subscribers over the previous month. Mobilink is one of the oldest telecoms and may have had the most to lose in terms of closing of SIMs.
The largest growth, however, was Telenors; their customer base grew by nearly 2 percent despite the recent loss of their brand ambassador. This increase may be attributed to Telenors tendency to cater to the wealthier classes by offering a portfolio of Value Added Services that can only function effectively if used in combination with Smart phone technology. The recent introduction of inexpensive Smart phones by a number of vendors may have led to an increase in purchase of Smart phones and a consequent increase in demand for complementary VAS, thus, increasing Telenors subscriber base.
Zong also displayed a subscriber growth of 1.56 percent but in terms of number of subscribers, Zong is far behind other players with an addition of only 99,767 subscribers. Despite low charges, Zong has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. This lack of enthusiasm for Zong may be due to its immature coverage; hence, creating a wider network would prove beneficial for Zong.