ISLAMABAD, Nov 29: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Tuesday said Pakistan was likely to attract up to $4 billion investment in the telecom sector in the next three to four years.

He said this at a meeting with International Telecommuni-cation Union secretary-general Yoshio Utsumi, who is here to attend the general assembly session of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity from Wednesday.

The minister said the telecom sector in Pakistan was poised for a massive growth and already the sector had employed some 20,000 workforce, which was expected to increase considerably over time.

He said Pakistan had registered a massive growth in the telecom sector due to its investment-friendly policies such as fixed-line deregulation policy announced in July 2003, mobile cellular policy of 2004 and broadband policy unveiled in December 2004.

The minister said the success of the policies was also reflected in the sector growth statistics which showed $1.13 billion revenue generation from auction of frequency spectrum in the mobile cellular and wireless local loop sectors while the fixed telephony grew from 4 million in 2003 to 5.9 million in 2005, mobile subscription from 2.4 million in 2003 to almost 19 million in 2005, overall tele-density from 4.63 per cent in 2003 to about 15 per cent in 2005.

He said the number of mobile operators had also gone up with six mobile cellular companies, 92 in wireless local loop while 12 in the long distance international area.