KARACHI: As the lockdowns begin to bite into people’s incomes, both of the country’s largest telecom service providers – Jazz and Telenor – report sharply changing consumer usage patterns, with a reduction in voice traffic leading the way.

“We are seeing a 10 per cent reduction in voice traffic” says Aamir Ibrahim, Chief Executive Officer of Jazz, adding that at the same time there is a 15pc increase in internet traffic.

“But because the internet bundles are so rich,” he says, “the revenues from there do not compensate for the decrease in voice. Overall our revenues are hit by 8-10pc.”

There is an increase in data usage by smartphone users, says Umair Mohsin, Chief Marketing Officer of Telenor, but the non-smartphone users have borne the brunt of the lockdowns.

“Their calling is down, particularly the daily wagers and rural labour” he says, but adds that this trend was evident even before the lockdowns since it is primarily driven by a decline in their incomes which predates the Covid-19-related disruptions.

Smartphone penetration in Pakistan is still very limited, they both emphasise. Even though 97pc of internet access is through mobile in Pakistan, says Ibrahim, smartphone penetration is still only 35pc.

“There are around 75 million smartphones in Pakistan out of 165m total handsets” he says, a far lower penetration rate than in many other more developed markets.

“98pc of our customers still use prepaid services, which means they rely on retail outlets for recharge” he tells Dawn. Since the lockdowns began, daily wagers are now recharging their accounts every other day instead of daily, he adds. Part of this is due to difficulty in accessing retail outlets, but another part is due to income erosion.

Smartphone users have increased their use of WhatsApp, are consuming more video on demand services and playing more games since the lockdowns began. “We’re seeing more data use for video conferencing as well,” Mohsin says.

Both of them say there is a sharp increase in the use of mobile money such as Jazzcash or Easypaisa, as well as the use of bank apps. “People are reducing their reliance on physical distribution and increasing digital distribution,” says Ibrahim.

“We see Jazzcash being used more and more for daily top ups, for example.”

In pre-lockdown days, 18pc of the daily recharge used to be through mobile payments, he says, which has now risen to 35pc.

Mohsin says Telenor has seen a near 20pc increase in the use of digital recharge channels. “This is a very fundamental transformation in payment channels.”

Base movement, a metric that measures how much movement there is between handsets and mobile towers, is down sharply as well since the lockdowns began, he says, but is reluctant to share numbers because this is market sensitive information.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2020