PTA to earn $0.5bn from mobile firms licences renewal
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD May 1: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is poised to earn another chunk of half a billion US dollars when the licence terms of two mobile cellular telephone companies would expire next year in April, an official source told Dawn.
The source said licences of both Instafone and Paktel would expire on April 2005, which earlier were granted to them for 15 years without any bidding process or licence fee.
Under the new mobile phone policy, the renewal of the licence of any company would require the payment of the same amount of money which were offered by the two new entrants in Pakistan's mobile sector during a recently held high profile bidding.
"This means that each company will have to pay $291 million each for the renewal of the licenses," the source said, adding that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority reserved the right to cancel the licence of any company whichever refuses to pay the standard fee of $291 for renewal.
Both Space Telecom of Syria and Norway's Telenor Mobile Communications had successfully bid for to get the two licences for $291 million each. Later Space Telecom backed off because it failed to pay a mandatory amount of 25 per cent within 10 working days.
Subsequently the third highest bidder, Warid Telecom, was offered to get the licence, which swiftly moved to accept the offer by paying the required amount within the stipulated period.
The source conceded that the three current mobile phone operators out of a total of four were issued licences to operate without any licence fee because of the absence of mobile phone policy. These companies are Mobilink, Instafone and Paktel. Ufone is the only mobile phone operator which had paid the licence fee of Rs50 million.
The source said the licence of Mobilink would expire on July 2007, while the licence of Ufone would expire on August 2013.
The new mobile cellular policy was announced to promote cellular sector for national benefit, ensure broad coverage at affordable prices, increase tele density, increase choice of services for customers, increase private investment in cellular mobile, recognize the rights and obligations of operators, establish and maintain fair competition among mobile and fixed operators, ensure uniform policy and regulatory regime with certainty for the future in-line with international best practices and achieve spectrum efficiency.
Since the new mobile sector policy is already in place, the repairs of inter connect ports etc.
The operators would also be required to ensure the call quality, 96 per cent call competition rate, call should be connected in seven seconds atleast during the first three years of operation and the network down time of not more than two per cent in any month.
Under the mobile policy a rollout obligations for coverage of 70 per cent Tehsil headquarters in four years is also included in the licence terms and conditions. The operators would also have to submit a performance bond to ensure compliance with rollout obligations.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority figures up to February 29, 2004 suggested 3.8 million total mobile phone users in Pakistan of which a large chunk of the market share is with Mobilink which has 2.4 million subscribers, Ufone 558,430 users, Instaphone 504,300 while that of Paktel is 342,220.
The current penetration of mobile phone in the population is 2.6 per cent.
