KARACHI, Aug 9: The federal government has approved the policy aimed at opening the market in telecommunication sector and currently the details of licensing process and the way the operators will be inter-connected are being finalized.

This was stated by the federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, while addressing the inaugural session of the ITCN Asia-2003 Conference at a local hotel here on Saturday.

He said that the government would issue two types of licences — one for the local loop and the other for domestic and international services. “We expect that by December this year, the licences would be in the hands of perspective operators,” he said.

An open transparent process would be followed in the award of licences, the minister said, adding that anyone who paid the nominal sum and had the ability to roll out the network would get a licence. Because of this, no cartels can be formed as there will not be a limit for the number of licences to be issued.

A very low entry fee has been fixed for local loop licences and a relatively higher fee for the long distance international operator, he pointed out.

The essence of the policy is to make sure that the network gets developed and a variety of service offerings is available to the people at competitive rates, he noted.

The minister said that in order to make the local loop operator viable, the international operator would pay them a considerable amount to terminate his calls.

Spelling out facilities being provided with regard to IT-enabled services, Mr Leghari said the PTCL would provide a free bandwidth for rooftop connectivity to call centres to back up the fibre connectivity. This would resolve age-old reliability and cost issue.

He also spoke on the policy for Universal Service Fund and said it would ensure that the telephone network rollout would adequately be funded for the rural and under-served areas of the country. This would be done in parallel to the PTCL putting in about 83,000 lines in rural areas, he added.

Mr Leghari said the market opening or telecom deregulation would offer great opportunities for the PTCL and private sector. Although, the government enjoys major share in PTCL, all the future ventures would be undertaken involving the private sector, he said.

The federal minister called upon software houses to come forward with useful projects that could be reasonably funded for the development. He held out the assurance that all such projects would be converted into funded projects.

He invited foreign investors to come forward and invest in Pakistan where they would find ample human resources and potential.

Earlier, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, federal minister for Investment and Privatization, said that the whole world was looking for the fresh opportunities to make investment. Pakistan is the country that offers such opportunities, he said, adding: “This is the only country in the world where foreigners have no restrictions on their movement.”

On Pakistan’s progress in economic sector, the minister said that the annual growth rate had gone up to five per cent whereas foreign investment, which earlier stood at half-a-billion dollars, surpassed last year the eight billion dollar mark.

Mr Jeh Shyan Wong, Chief Executive Officer of the E-Commerce Gateway, Singapore, presented welcome address.—PPI