PTCL losing fixed line market
ISLAMABAD (October 26 2007): Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) is losing fixed line market to other operators with its subscribers going down from above 5.0 million in 2006 to 4.5 million in the first quarter of 2007, reveals Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The PTA telecom indicators released here on Thursday showed that the PTCL fixed line subscribers have declined from 5,128,442 in 2006 to 4,597,279 in September 2007.
Among other fixed line operators World Call is also losing market as its subscribers have come down from 13,327 in 2006 to 9,728 in September 2007. The fixed line subscribers of NTC have increased from 92,163 in 2006 to 99,665 in September 2007 and Brian Limited from 5,880 in 2006 to 6,670 in the first quarter of 2007. The subscribers of Union Communication have increased from 200 in 2006 to 2,500 in September 2007 besides Naya Tel subscribers going up from 11,000 in 2006 to 13,500 in 2007.
However, PTCL wireless local loop (WLL) subscribers have gone up from 661,532 in 2006 to 1,158,420 in the first quarter of 2007. Further analysis of the data showed that wireless subscribers of Telecard have increased from 229,292 to 429,811 during the period under review. The subscribers of World Call have increased from 115,637 to 335,753 and subscribers of Great Bear jumped up from 21,407 to 54,053 during the first quarter of current fiscal.
The data showed that fixed line tele-density has declined to 2.99 in the first quarter of 2007 from 3.39 of 2006 while WLL tele-density have jumped to 1.25 in September 2007 from 0.66 in 2006 and later helped raised the total tele-density to 4.24 in the first quarter of current fiscal from last year’s 4.05.
The PTA’s quarterly telecom review of March 2007 had also pointed out that fixed line tele-density in the country was on decline with the PTCL losing its fixed lines users. The review had revealed that the drop out started in March 2006. Telecom experts say that the fixed line users have been declining because of increase in WLL and mobile users besides decline in the PTCL service.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:10/26/2007
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