Advancement: Heavy investments continue in 3G/4G infrastructure
KARACHI: Companies providing mobile services continued to deposit in modernized internet infrastructure expansion in a bid to daub millions of intensity new users in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has reported that mobile firms have invested another $659.4 million in a mercantile year finished Jun 30, 2016.
According to a PTA, mobile firms warranted 22% (Rs99 billion) of sum revenues (Rs453 billion) from sales of 3G/4G/LTE information in a year underneath review.
A organisation pronounced it is earning large revenues, that are fuelled by “major expansion in mobile information that has purebred a unusual expansion of 200% on month-on-month basement in Oct 2016”.
A new proclamation of a organisation combined a association “plans of investing in an additional 1,000 4G sites opposite Pakistan after a association achieved a 2016 4G rollout plan, 3 months forward of schedule. The further of 1,000 4G sites will take a altogether sum of (the firm’s) 4G sites to around 6,000 by a finish of this year, creation it a largest, widest and fastest in terms of 4G coverage,” it said.
Parvez Iftikhar, an Information and Communication Technology expert, pronounced that mobile firms are investing in 3G/4G infrastructure deployment, as they have some-more belligerent to cover.
“The companies are nonetheless to yield modernized internet services such as 4G in a whole cities like Islamabad [the capital],” he said. “They are still not going to tiny towns.”
The new investment of $659.4 million is homogeneous to 67% of what a mobile firms invested final year (ie second year of their 3G/4G services in Pakistan), and 37% of a investment they done in a year they launched a modernized internet use in a preceding year (2013-14).
A poignant apportionment (ie $1.2 billion) of a sum investment done in 2013-14 was spent to buy 3G/4G licences. Warid did not attend in a licencing auction, as it already had a looseness to offer a modernized information use ie LTE. Telenor bought 4G looseness in a final mercantile year (2015-16).
3G/4G/LTE users
PTA reported that a series of 3G/4G/LTE users increasing by 1.12 million (or 3.28%) on month-on-month basement to 35.44 million in Oct 2016.
ICT experts pronounced that there is outrageous intensity for expansion in series of modernized information users in a country, as a series is most reduce than what officials of online selling portals and branchless bankers envision for 2020.
They combined that a intensity of new internet users seems aloft when compared to a existent sum series of mobile phone users in a nation during 135 million in Oct 2016.
The ratio of mobile internet users stands during a entertain of a sum mobile phone users.
Published in The Express Tribune, Dec 7th, 2016.
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Article source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/1255642/advancement-heavy-investments-continue-3g4g-infrastructure/