Mobile users rise to 97m

[Neo]

Mobile users rise to 97m

Thursday, 10 Jun, 2010

As Economic Survey 2010 puts the country's population at 173.54 million, it turns out that 56 per cent of the people own a cell phone. — File Photo Front Page

Centre moves to allay Sindh’s concerns Centre moves to allay Sindh’s concerns KARACHI: The number of cellular subscribers in the country during the month of April rose to 97.30 million, the latest figures released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed.

As Economic Survey 2010 puts the country's population at 173.54 million, it turns out that 56 per cent of the people own a cell phone.

After brooding long at the social spending on education and health and learning from the Survey that 3 million labour force in the motherland is unemployed, it offers something to cheer that every other person in the country is a cellular subscriber--due allowance has to be given of course to multiple users.

The tele-density crossed 63.5 per cent mark during April with major contribution of 59.4 per cent by the cellular segment, followed by 2.1 per cent part from the fixed line and 1.6 per cent from the Wireless Local Loop (WLL) segment.

On year-on-year basis, the cellular subscribers grew six per cent.

Analysts at Elixir Securities say that continuing the past trend; Mobilink maintained its share of 33 per cent in the cellular segment with year-on-year (Y0Y) growth of 12 per cent.

Telenor followed with a segment share of 24 per cent and subscribers base of 23.5 million, 17 per cent higher YoY.

Ufone market share stayed put at 17 per cent with 16.4 million subscribers. Zong maintained its 7 per cent share of the cellular market.

Elixir Securities analysts stated that going forward the FY11 budget was largely a non event for the sector. Implementation of VAT or the increase in GST from 19.5pc to 20.5pc was unlikely to have much of an impact on pricing front as cellular sector ARPUs were fairly low and 1-2pc increase in rates may not impact demand.

Growth was expected to remain at normalised levels in the cellular segment.

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