Key ICT Information

• Already, more than 800 cities and towns have been connected to the Internet under this regime while plans to expand this service are progressing.
• PTCL is the major Internet backbone provider in the country. It runs the major IP backbone through which access facilities are provided to majority of Internet users in Pakistan.
• The current IP bandwidth utilization in Pakistan is about 240 Mbps.
• National Telecommunication Corporation is the organization entrusted with the responsibility of providing telecommunication services to government agencies and designated users.
• NTC is deploying a countrywide ATM based multi-services data network capable of carrying voice, video and multimedia traffic.
• In addition to public sector operators, there are 80 private sector Internet service providers and nationwide data communication network operators who provide Internet accession all major cities of Pakistan.
• According to estimates, the total number of Internet users in Pakistan is about 1.7 million.
• There are four cellular network providers who serve a collective subscriber base of 1 million subscribers throughout the country.

People's access to technology

• PTCL, the exclusive provider of telecommunication services has installed more than 1 million new telephone lines since 1996.
• Teledensity has increased by 6% per year, but the national tele-density is still less than 2.5%.
• Almost 90% of PTCL's infrastructure is installed in the urban areas where 34% of the population lives, while rural areas remain highly under served due to many reasons, resource constraints being one of them.
• The rural segment, which is close to 100 million people, is served by under a million phone lines.
• At present, the access charges are about US$5 per month while local area phone calls are priced at US 4 cents for 5 minutes duration calls.
• The maximum peak time nationwide long distance charges are currently capped at about US 17 cents per minute.

Quality of connectivity

• The entire PTCL network is digital and 75% of the network infrastructure was developed in the last 12 years.
• The households in Pakistan are classified into various income categories starting with US$20 per month to US$117 per month in US$17 increments.
• There is reasonable analysis available to establish that households falling in the top three income brackets starting at US$83 month can afford telephone connectivity.
• The basic access to telecoms is also facilitated through payphones, which are deployed all over the country and whose number has reached to 100,000.
• In terms of Internet access, the IP bandwidth prices have been brought down from over US$60,000 to US$6000 per 2Mbps per month within a span of three years.
• This drastic reduction in backbone prices has had a very positive impact on end user pricing, which have become affordable, averaging at US 25 cents per hour (peak time) in major cities of the country.
• The telephone access charges are capped at US 4 cents for unlimited duration call from user premises to ISP. Broadband access is still expensive, priced at over US$100 per month.

Open Source

• PLUC (Pakistan Linux User's Community) <http://www.linuxPakistan.com> is one of the active GNU and Linux communities which have been functioning since 1999 with about 400 members.
• According to the Economic Survey published by Government of Pakistan, there are currently about 1.7 million active Internet users in the country thereby enabling access for about 1.16% of the population.

e-Government

• The e-Government Program was launched with much far fare in 2001 with three fold objectives i.e. to encourage ICT's for enabling information and services delivery to the citizens in a cost effective manner, initiate measures for reengineering of work flow in government departments to enable electronic services delivery to citizens to bring efficiency in operation and also to bring transparency in government functions and access to information.

Hardware Sector

• The hardware manufacturing and assembly sector has received US$52 million in capital investment and currently has annual turnover of US$100 million per annum.
• It employs 3600 personnel, including 300 professionals and has over 30 fully functional manufacturing facilities across the country.
• The government has developed and implemented projects and programs to achieve the IT policy objectives and an estimated Rs. 2.5 Billion in the year ending June 2002 and is expected to spend approximately Rs. 3.5 Billion on the IT Policy and Action plan projects during the current year.

Source: Digital Review for Asia Pacific