KARACHI: Despite a revenue decline of 2.4 percent, Pakistan’s telecom sector has contributed 128 percent more to the national economy and managed to withstand the impact of COVID-19, said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in its annual report.
The official document revealed that 98 percent of Pakistani households own a mobile phone, adding that the mobile service penetration level reached about 81 percent toward the end of October with 172.3 million mobile subscriptions.
There was also an impressive growth trend of 17 percent in broadband subscriptions that crossed 90.1 million in October while 4G subscriptions registered an exponential increase of 60 percent during the same period.
“By and large, the sector withstood the impact of COVID-19 and showed sustainable revenues of Rs537.2 billion ($3.3 billion) in FY2020 as compared to Rs550.4 billion in FY2019,” the PTA report said on Friday.
“While the historic lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic slackened economic activity, vibrant telecommunication systems played a pivotal role in ensuring availability of essential services to the community,” it added.
The report maintained that the data usage increased by 77 percent to 4,498 petabytes during FY20 compared to 2,545 petabytes consumed in FY19. The massive upsurge was caused by the work-from-home situation and shifting of academic activities to online platforms
“The coronavirus pandemic has boosted the internet usage not just in Pakistan but also across the world since more and more people are beginning to do things online. Many of them have started using Zoom, Google and Skype etc. for meetings, and seminars,” Pervaiz Iftikhar, who is part of the prime minister’s taskforce on IT and telecom, told Arab News.
The pandemic has also led to the rise of broadband penetration to 39.2 percent in FY20 from 33.8 percent in FY19.
The telecom sector contributed Rs278.4 billion ($1.7 billion) to the national exchequer which is 128 percent higher than the previous year’s Rs121.9 billion. The contribution to the national economy came in the form of Rs41.5 billion on account of general sales tax and Rs141.1 billion in the shape of other PTA deposits, according to the report.
“I believe the data usage may reduce a little since the work-from-home trend is gradually subsiding. The overall broadband penetration growth rate, however, is not likely to go down and will continue to increase further,” Shankar Talreja, who works with the Topline Securities, told Arab News.
Officials believe that the broadband demand would continue to increase since many people have realized that they can accomplish much of their work by relying on online platforms.
“The situation is not likely to normalize before at least a year,” said Iftikhar. “We should take advantage of the current opportunity and improve our internet quality, affordability and accessibility. Besides, we should also reduce the tax burden on telecom operators.”
Pakistan is planning a commercial rollout of 5G services and has conducted its first trials.
With 5G planning underway, recommendations on its “Environmental Protection and Health Related Issues” have been drafted, said the report.
