Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Telecom sector has emerged as a prominent contributor to Pakistan’s economy and the sector contribution to the national exchequer has shown an increase of 129% in year 2020 when compared to year 2019, despite economy being under pressure due to Covid effects. As per Pakistan Telecom Authority Annual Report 2020, released here today, the sector contributed PKR 278 billion (including PTA deposits to national exchequer) in FY 2020 as compared to PKR 121 billion in FY 2019 registering Year-on-Year growth of 129%.
A surge in demand for telecom services due to lockdown resulted in significant growth not only in subscriber base but also in the usage of telecom services. Today, data usage stands at 4,498 Peta Bytes (FY2020) as compared to 2,545 Peta Bytes (FY 2019) showing a growth of over 77%. This substantial growth would not have been possible if the networks were not upgraded. The country currently has international bandwidth connectivity of 3.1 Tera Bytes and around 47,000 cell sites, of which 90% are 4G enabled sites.
According to the PTA Annual Report, in the last five years, total broadband subscription in the country grew by 175%. Today broadband subscribers have crossed 90 million showing a growth of around 8% in FY2020. Pakistan has a total broadband penetration of 42.2% in FY2020. The telecom networks are currently available for 87% of the population and PTA is working with operators to increase their network coverage for remaining 13% unserved people of the country. The total teledensity now stands at 82% with over 172 million mobile subscribers and 2.2 million fixed-line subscribers.
In 2020, the Foreign Direct Investment across the economy was affected due to global lockdowns, however, telecom sector made an iconic share of 25% (USD 623 million) in the total FDI made in the country. Total investment made by the local operators grew by 14.25% and a total of USD 734 million were invested locally.
