ISLAMABAD: The rising trend of digitizing products and services and creating a rich online experience is becoming primary focus of new age content providers.
The new kinds of data services and online portals are being developed by service providers requiring more bandwidth, pushing the broadband technologies towards more innovation.
The broadband connectivity plays a pivotal role in technological advancement of a country but it remained dependent on fixed line solutions for decades, and limited to geographical boundaries that were deemed profitable by operators.
A true revolution began with introduction of wireless internet connectivity over hand held devices, particularly, 3G, 4G/LTE (mobile broadband) in last decade or so.
At present, mobile broadband is the most dynamic market segment as global mobile broadband penetration reached 47 % in 2015, a value that increased 12 times since 2007 (ITU).
According to latest available statistics, broadband subscribers have reached around 30 million including 26.2 million mobile broadband users at the end of February, 2015. Similarly, world broadband subscribers have crossed 730 million mark.
A latest report of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has revealed basic email and internet services were introduced in Pakistan in the early 1990s but the broadband services were first introduced in 2001 by Micronet with Pakistan's first ever DSL service.
Pakistan implemented Broadband Policy in 2004 with the optimistic targets for next five years. In 2006, NayaTel started offering FTTH services bringing fiber into the broadband sector.
The next year, Wateen rolled out the first WiMAX broadband service in Pakistan. Internet users in Pakistan experienced 3G speeds of upto 3.1 Mbps with launch of PTCL's EvDO service in 2009. Despite introduction of new technologies such as WiMAX, EvDO, and FTTH etc, the broadband penetration remained on the lower side.
Broadband services were mainly confined to the metropolitan cities.
PTA kept on facilitating the broadband sector with technology neutral licensing, easy barriers to entry, and formation of Broadband Stakeholders Group etc.
The introduction of WiMAX and success of EvDO showed the glimpse of potential of mobile broadband in Pakistan.
At the same time, Pakistan made huge strides in the cellular mobile arena in terms of subscribers, coverage, mobile phone penetration, tariffs etc. PTA provided necessary spectrum for mobile broadband through NGMS spectrum auction.
The rapid uptake of mobile broadband is a testimony of the fact that there exists a huge demand for internet connectivity on smart devices.
According to a recent report published by Grappetite on the smartphone usage trends in Pakistan, smartphone adoption has reached around 8 to 10 percent of the population. As the demand for mobile broadband increases, the influx of smartphones will also increase and vice versa.
Currently, broadband penetration of the country stands at 8.97 % as compared to 2.07% at the end of corresponding period last year. The huge spike in total broadband penetration is due to the fact that the mobile broadband leads the way in total broadband subscriber base.
The current penetration of mobile broadband is 7.2% which shows that the mobile broadband will continue to form the major chunk of the broadband market in the future, the report said.
Broadband sector of Pakistan is now a highly competitive market as operators are running extensive marketing campaigns on print and electronic media regarding their data packages with the expectation of attracting maximum number of customers.
Almost every mobile operator has given special attention to the social media services such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter etc. On the other hand, fixed and wireless broadband operators are banking on promotions and incentives to compete with the mobile broadband operators. The influx of low cost smartphones coupled with the presence of endless social platforms is driving the subscribers towards more and more demand for bandwidth.
Each operator came up with their own marketing and pricing strategy to become the early leader in mobile broadband arena.
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