ISLAMABAD, July 12: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday granted first Long Distance International (LDI) licence to a Pakistani firm, Callmate Telips Telecommunication Ltd as part of ongoing deregulation of telecom sector.

The licence was issued by PTA after the completion of formalities by the company and submission of performance bond of $10 million as per policy laid down by the authority. M/s Callmate was among the 19 companies which had been qualified for the grant of LDI licence during the public hearing held by the authority on July 5.

This is for the first time that private companies are being allowed to provide fixed line telecommunication service, which earlier was the monopoly of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). More licences would be issued on completion of formalities by other companies.

Earlier, 23 companies had shown interest in obtaining LDI licences while 72 companies had applied for the Local Loop (LL) licences. PTA, after disqualifying four companies, had finalized the list of 19 potential investors for the grant of LDI licenses.

They were M/s AG Telecom, M/s ARY Communication (PVT) LTD, M/s Bestel Communication (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Burraq Telecom, M/s Callmate Telips Telecom Ltd, M/s Circle Net Comm, M/s Dancom, M/s DV Com, M/s Link Direct International, M/s Micro Tech Links (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Redtone Telecommunication (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Spell Telecom, M/s Telecard, M/s Telecom Development (Pvt) Ltd, M/s Telenor, M/s Utel Pak Ltd, M/s Warid Telecom, M/S Wise Communication (Pvt) Ltd and M/s WorldCall Telecom.

In a related development, PTA chairman Maj-Gen (Retd) Shahzada Alam Malik also presided over a public hearing on the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. The public hearing was organized by the authority in compliance with the orders of the Rawalpindi Bench of the Lahore High Court to conduct market dynamic study on DSL service to assess market potential of this service.

Highlighting the importance of the public hearing, the chairman recalled that earlier the authority had issued a determination allowing the ISPs to provide DSL service for the fast growth of this broadband service, to open this service to new operators and provision and access of the facility to the common users.

During the public hearing, presentation was given by Chief Executive Officer of the Trisektor, a renowned professional company, entrusted with the task of conducting the survey.

The survey conducted by the company in nine major cities focused on different aspects of the DSL service including the number of users, quality of service, availability of service in the rural areas, capacity of the present DSL operators and the cost being charged by the operators for this service.

The participants representing telecom service providers, IT professionals, mediamen and service users were requested to give their views and comments on various facets of the survey as well as their opinion to restrict the DSL service only to the existing four companies or open it to more Internet Service Providers (ISPs), eligible to operate effectively in providing this service.