The broadband bind

Access to broadband internet is a basic necessity in many European countries, and the United Nations is said to be considering broadband access as a universal human right. This speaks volumes about its impact on people, societies and economies. The situation in Pakistan is not so promising, as broadband services have limited adoption.
It doesn matter which prism one is using - the donors op-down or the localised ottom-up - broadband subscriptions of just over two million is hardly the laurel policymakers can rest on. Granted, the actual number of users may be many times over this figure.
Even on a household level, the broadband penetration is poor, considering there are about 27 million households in Pakistan.
Broadband penetration has picked up in the last two years, and PTA expects broadband subscriptions to grow almost 10 times to reach 19.5 million by 2020. The potential market for broadband in major cities alone hovers close to 10 million households - its a pretty big, largely untapped, addressable market for the broadband service providers (BSPs).
Pakistan needs to leap big because it is losing out on so many benefits broadband can deliver, in areas such as e-commerce, health solutions, education, public service delivery, and online payment systems.
Before discussing the way out of this bind, it is important to highlight the three broad constraints that are currently holding back the broadband penetration in Pakistan.
First up is the economics on the user end, where an interplay of factors like low literacy rates, lack of local-language content and limited service footprint has kept the broadband adoption at a low level. This is compounded by the inability of a large chunk of the population to buy their own, personal computers and other tech gadgets.
Secondly, the BSPs seem to be caught in a rut. The price curve is not coming down despite healthy competition among various operators. Pricey services, coupled with capped data volumes and QoS issues, have all sustained a high level of customer churn rate in Pakistani market, which eventually hurts the operators who cannot recover their fixed, upfront costs.
Lastly, the phenomenon of competing broadband technologies operating in Pakistan (DSL, WiMAX, EvDO, etc.) was supposed to be a boon for customer adoption. Yet none of these technologies has been significantly up-scaled in the country so far to go into unserved areas. Lack of additional radio spectrum for BSPs, in conjunction with the above two factors, seem responsible for drying up of fresh investments and lack of new entrants in the market.
How to turn this abysmal situation around in a short period of time? One can turn to mobile broadband (on 3G networks) to leverage the near ubiquitous cellular connectivity in the country - but that alone may not cut it due to premium data rates and restricted user interface on mobiles.
It increasingly appears that wireless broadband services, offered on technologies like WiMAX and EvDO, can plug the gap.
Whatever the technology platform, there has to be more focus on the users needs and preferences. Value for money is something very few among the current users seem to associate with broadband - this has to change.
If the users are offered affordable access, are educated about internets benefits, and are exposed to more indigenized content and applications, broadband market may develop more rapidly than it currently has.