ISLAMABAD, Dec 1: The tele-density in cellular phone sector has hit an all-time high of 72.28 per cent as number of subscribers in the country, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Northern Areas, touched 129.7 million by September this year.

The cellular tele-density was 3.29pc about 10 years ago, but proactive policies of successive governments helped the sector to achieve growth.

The data compiled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority revealed on Sunday that the cellular tele-density remained sluggish this year because registration of millions of illegal SIMs has been cancelled by telecom operators. Revision of mechanism for selling SIMs and limitation of SIMs on one CNIC also suppressed growth of subscribers.

However, effective marketing campaigns by the operators stimulating subscription of cellular phone companies in urban and rural areas attracted 4.59m new users to join subscribers’ base of five telecom operators from June to September. During the last two months, about 1.18 new subscribers were added to the networks of all operators.

Moreover, the tele-density in the country, including fixed, Wireless Local Loop and mobile phone, has reached record 75.77pc.

The tele-density is defined as number of customers per 100 people. Hence it is roughly said that 75.77pc of Pakistanis own and avail telephony services through different technologies.

Meanwhile, the data showed that 270,000 new broadband subscribers were added to the broadband family of the country from May to August this year, taking the total broadband base to 2.88m subscribers by the end of August as compared to 2.61m at the end of April.—APP