KARACHI, June 18: The federal minister for information technology and telecommunications, Awais Ahmed Leghari, said on Wednesday that Pakistan had been inducted into what in technical parlance was known as a “wireless loop” and over the next two years, there would be no cable in rural areas.

Speaking at a press briefing after inaugurating the PTCL’s first corporate customer service centre, the minister said soon there would be no wire, no DE (development) and no line-man.

He said the PTCL would provide from 50,000 to 100,000 wireless telephone connections in the rural areas.

Speaking about mobile telephones, Mr Leghari said at present there were 2.2 million cellular phones in the country.

He added that Ufone had been given a target of carrying the number of connections from 500,000 to two million.

He hoped that by the next financial year, the number of mobile phones in the country would be five million.

Mr Leghari told newsmen that 300 cities had been provided with fibre optic connections, adding that by the next year the figure would have risen to 600.

He said the quality of the Internet was to be improved. Internet had been made available in 1,600 cities and now the focus was on improving its quality.

The federal minister said efforts were being made to enable consumers to pay electricity and gas bills through telephone and an Electric Transaction Ordinance would soon come into force.

He added that for the same purpose an accreditation council was also being formed to carry out business transactions through computer.

He said another step being taken was that of computerization of land record and some 25,000 data operators would be employed during the next two to three years.

Mr Leghari said an e-government programme would involve an investment of Rs1 billion which would give a boost to the IT industry in the country.

The PTCL chairman, Akhter Ahmed Bajwa, said that corporate customer centres would have new service provisioning, maintenance support and end-to-end communication solution provisioning.

Speaking at the inauguration of broadband cable network services by WorldCall Broadband, Awais Leghari said: “The government in recognition of the importance of the telecom sector to the national economy will continue to direct policy and review the operations of the regulatory framework to facilitate new investment and developments of telecoms services in Pakistan.”—APP