KARACHI, Oct 6: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has announced substantial reduction in different categories of PTCL bandwidth tariffs which would have positive impact on broadband proliferation, IT enabled services and telecommunication market.

Decision to this effect was taken in a meeting of the authority held in Islamabad on Friday. The PTA directed the PTCL to reduce its tariffs and issued a detailed determination on bandwidth tariffs, says a press release.

PTA Chairman Major Gen (Retd) Shahzada Alam Malik said that the industry had been approaching the authority for quite some time requesting to regulate the bandwidth tariffs claiming that the rates charged by PTCL were abnormally high and thus did not give them any competitive advantage in the international market.

Moreover, he further said that some investors had also contested that the current tariff structure was discouraging to make investment in the country as it was cheaper to acquire these facilities from other Asian countries.

“This entire scenario is hampering the broadband proliferation and affecting the growth of IT enabled services in Pakistan that are heavily dependent of bandwidth tariffs,” the PTA chief observed.

The authority had earlier issued a determination on this issue on June 23, 2006 directing PTCL to revise its bandwidth tariffs. PTCL however, filed an appeal with the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench. LHC on August 7, 2006, after mutual agreement between the PTA and PTCL directed the authority to decide the case strictly in accordance with law within 60 days.

PTA subsequently issued a detailed consultation paper on the subject and received the feedback from the stakeholders. In order to give full opportunity to the stakeholders the authority also held hearing on the subject on September 22, 2006 and October 5, 2006.

The authority after considering the arguments of all stakeholders issued a fresh determination and announced that the bandwidth tariffs of PTCL should be in accordance with the international benchmarks of countries where effective competition exists.

As for International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC) tariffs effective from January 1, 2007: the E1 (2M bps) for ISPs will be $2,100 and for voice operators $2,300 instead of $3,000 and $2,852 respectively.

Similarly for DS3 (45M bps) ISPs will pay $16,800 instead of $48,000. STM 1 (155M bps) price will be $48,300 and $52,900 for ISPs and voice licenses respectively.

In addition to the above measures the PTA has also directed PTCL to provide E1 (2M bps) at $1,000 on shared basis from January 1, 2007 as being provided by various other countries such as India.

Similarly data and voice services rates of Internet Protocol (IP) have also been reduced significantly from January 1, 2007. E1 rates will be $1,500 instead of 1,600, DS3 will be $24,000 instead of $25,000 and STM 1 will be $46,500 instead of $60,000.

Furthermore, IP tariffs for voice services for Long Distance and International (LDI) operators have also been revised and reduced by 31pc to 48pc which would be effective from January 1, 2007.

The DPLC tariffs for voice services have also been reduced by 20pc to 30pc.