Telecom subscribers down by 2.4 million
KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has released telecom subscriber numbers for the month of January 2010. As per the released data, overall subscriber base witnessed a huge net decline of 2.4 million.
Cellular segment witnessed the highest monthly decline in the post-deregulation era with draining of 2.2 million subscribers.
In addition to this, WLL segment also continued to depict a declining trend in its subscriber base for the second consecutive month. Consequently, overall teledensity level of the country squeezed-out by almost 1.6 pps to 61.9 percent from its Dec 2009 level.
On segregated basis, cellular segment’s penetration retreated by 1.4 pps to 58.2 percent while WLL’s penetration declined by 10bps to 1.6 percent and fixed line (WLL+Land line) penetration collectively calculated at 3.7 percent for Jan 2010.
During January 2010, the cellular segment witnessed the highest ever monthly decline at 2,170k since 2004. Quite interestingly, Warid Telecom, whose subscriber stood at 16.2 million subscribers almost 2.65 million lower subscribers than last month’s level, solely contributes to this monthly decline.
According to Abrar Hussain telecom analyst at First Capital this decline might be attributable to the company’s policy shift in the definition of its active subscriber status. Additionally, this could also be the impact of PTA’s efforts to curb the registration of illegal SIMs as well as blockage of already activated but unregistered SIMs.
On segregated basis, Mobilink remained the market leader with 31.1 million i.e.33 percent of market share with the player also attracting the highest additions at 263,000 subscribers during the month.
Telenor secured the second position with a market share of 24 percent. Ufone secured the third position that previously it shared with Warid. Ufone’s market share stood at 19 percent with net additions for the month at 67,000.
During the month, WLL segment witnessed another back-to-back decline of 95,000 subscribers with the base receding to 2.6 million. Telecard added 6,000 subscribers to its base with the month-end level of 656,000.
On the other hand, the segment giant PTCL witnessed a decline of 53,000 in subscribers to 1.2 million exactly the same level that was in June 2008.
On market share basis, PTCL still remains the market leader in the segment with 46 percent market share while this position is closely succeeded by Telecard and Worldcall with almost 25 percent and 23 percent market share, respectively.
Source: The News
Date:3/13/2010
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