High-speed internet: Broadband subscriptions near 30 million mark
KARACHI: The broadband fever doesn’t seem to be dying down as the number of subscriptions in the country hit almost 30 million after cellular service providers sold nearly one and a half million high-speed mobile internet connections in February 2016, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed on Monday.
The number of broadband connections in the country increased to 29.3 million at the end of February, up 5.25% compared to 27.85 million in the previous month, the PTA data showed.
The number of third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) users reached 26.2 million at the end of the month under review, constituting 89% of the total broadband subscriber base, the data shows. This was an increase of 6% compared to 24.7 million in the preceding month.
The mobile internet users now account for more than one-fifth (20%) of the country’s total cellular base as the cellular mobile operators’ (CMOs) overall user base (voice and data users combined) increased by 2.1 million or 1.7% month-on-month to stand at 129.9 million subscribers at the end of February.
Mobilink ended on top with almost 37.48 million subscriptions followed by Telenor Pakistan, which finished second with 36 million users.
China Mobile Pakistan (Zong), Ufone and Warid were third, fourth and fifth operators with 24.85 million, 20.58 million and 10.9 million users respectively. Also leading the mobile broadband category, Mobilink boasted over 7.9 million 3G users at the end of February followed by Telenor that had 7.2 million 3G users.
Zong remained third in the mobile broadband category increasing its 3G users to 5.4 million and its 4G subscriptions crossed 481,000. Ufone’s 3G user base improved to 4.8 million while Warid surpassed 257,000 users on its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.
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