KARACHI, Jan 19: Although the monopoly of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company over basic telephony came to an end last December, the government has not even announced a licensing policy for those private parties that might be interested in setting up their telecommunications infrastructure in the country.

Well-placed sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the government should have announced a licensing policy earlier than the expiry of the PTCL’s monopoly over basic telephony.

The regional director of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Col Rizwan Ahmed Hydery, confirmed that the government had yet to announce a licensing policy for private parties. When asked why the government had not yet announced the policy, he refused to offer any comments.

The sources, however, contended that any new company would not be able to have the infrastructure that the PTCL had acquired over the years.

“The new operators in the field will have the benefit of modern technology, but still they will be able to come in competition with the PTCL in the international service only,” they said.

They pointed out that the new operators might compete with the PTCL in a few big cities, adding that “for overall competition much bigger investment would be required”.

They said that as it is the PTCL was already operating in an environment of competition in the mobile telephone service, Internet service, manufacturing of telephone sets and other equipment.

Meanwhile, sources told Dawn that the PTCL had decided to further modernize its infrastructure facilities and improve its services at a total cost of Rs18 billion.

“The modernization programme also includes the provision for increasing the number of fixed telephones from the current 3.2 million to 3.6 million by the end of 2002,” they said.

They added that the PTCL would shortly invite bids for developing state-of-the-art billing and customer care services to be offered next year at a cost of about 25 to 30 million dollars.

The sources said the PTCL divided its revenue into two main segments: international revenue and domestic revenue. “International calling rates (accounting rates) have been declining over the past few years due to increased competition internationally. The reduction in rates is being compensated by a strong growth in international incoming traffic. The growth seen in the PTCL’s revenues is due mainly to the domestic segment. To offset the impact of reduced international settlement rates and align with global trends, domestic tariffs were raised in 2001.”