KARACHI: Governor for easy access to all citizens: Telecom facilities
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, May 30: While the average teledensity in Asian countries is about 10.5 per cent, the teledensity in Pakistan is 2.7 per cent. In rural areas, it is even less than one per cent.
This was disclosed by the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Shahzada Alam Malik, at a seminar on telecommunications here on Friday.
“In consultation with provincial governments, the telecoms regulator has identified problems and bottlenecks. There are 50,000 villages in the country. At least 40,000 villages are without telephone connections. There are millions in this country who have not heard a dialtone.”
Speaking about the much-awaited deregulation policy of the telecommunications sector, Mr Malik said the monopoly of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company had come to an end in December last year.
“In January this year, private companies should have rolled out their plans taking advantage of the deregulation of the telecommunications sector. Unfortunately this did not happen. In about 70 countries, the phase of deregulation has been successfully ushered in. In these countries, the telecommunications infrastructure has improved vastly.”
He said as far as the PTA was concerned, it was all for deregulation and privatization of the PTCL. He added that the PTA had two options. “Either adopt a restrictive model in which competition is not allowed. Or go for an open model with few barriers for private companies. The PTA intends to support the second model.”
The PTA chairman said private companies should invest in Pakistan for three reasons. “First, the population of the country is about 145 million. The number of cellular phones in the country — around two million — is very insufficient and there would be tremendous growth in this sector. There is a glut in Europe and the US.”
He said: “Quick issuance of licence, reduction of royalty on provision of cellular mobile, Internet and card pay-phone service, waiver of royalty in some cases, simplification of type approval procedure, switching over to calling party pays regime, NOC exemption for mobile phones and licence fee exemption for satellite service providers are some of the few proud initiatives taken by the PTA in the recent past.”
Former interior minister Moinuddin Haider said that the idea of having a regulatory body was to ensure the interests of consumers. He urged the PTA chairman to figure out if investments in the utilities had any trickle-down effect or not.
Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ebad said access to telecommunications was not a privilege of some people, rather it was a discrete part of essential utilities, the access to which is the basic right of a common man.
“I firmly believe that telecommunications is an essential tool for access to information and knowledge. As the technology is advancing, newer, cheaper and more efficient equipment and services are introduced with a great zeal and enthusiasm.”
The IT and Telecom offer the possibility of delivering basic health and education services more efficiently to the people at their doorstep by providing them access to an environment to reap the full benefits of this opportunity, he said.
The governor called for provision of these facilities to all those who have so far not been able to utilize the same.
He pointed out that Pakistan holds a geo-strategic position in Asia Pacific. It can effectively serve as a telecommunication hub for the South and Central Asia region.
“We, therefore, need to create an environment to reap the full benefits of this opportunity for which we need to develop an excellent infrastructure”.
The government, he said, was mindful of this opportunity and was taking necessary steps to ensure a conducive environment for investment in this sector, and it was now up to the investors to come forward and take an advantage of this situation.
He said: “At present, we in Pakistan like many other countries are experiencing a digital divide.” This is the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” and this gap would have to be bridged by bringing telecommunication facilities within an easy access to all citizens.
The governor said: “In Sindh, teledensity is a little high as compared to other provinces, but is quite low in rural areas, and in most of the villages, still do not exist.”
He observed that there are problems in the quality of telecommunication services. Network congestion, inadequate coverage, call-drop and noise in case of cellular mobile services and slow download in case of Internet services are generally being observed.
Cutting of cables, denial of service attacks, over-charging at PCOs, over-billing of local calls, non-delivery of telephone bills have put the consumers in a miserable condition, he added. He hoped that the PTA would take care of such problems by enforcing the licence conditions implicitly.
PTA officials gave a presentation on the performance of the telecommunications in the country.
