Telecom sector to attract $4b investment by 2008: IT Minister
By Ali Imran

ISLAMABAD—Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari Tuesday said Pakistan was likely to attract up to $ 4 billion investment in the telecom sector in the next three to four years given the tremendous scope for growth and hunger for telecom services in the country.
"The telecom sector is Pakistan is poised for a massive growth in the coming years and already the sector has employed some 20,000 workforce so far which is expected to increase considerably over time," he said in a meeting with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi who arrived in the capital early Tuesday to attend the 10th annual session of the General Assembly of the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) starting here tomorrow (Wednesday).
State Minister for Information Technology Ali Asjid Malhi, IT Secretary Farrakh Qayyum, Advisor to IT Minister Dr Aamir Matin, Member Telecom Nooruddin Baqai and senior government officials were also present.
The minister told the ITU official Pakistan had registered a massive growth in the telecom sector through investment friendly policies such as fixed-line deregulation policy announced in July 2003, mobile cellular policy brought out in January 2004 and broadband policy unveiled in December 2004. "These policies have gone a long way in achieving their objectives in terms of infrastructure development, increase in investment and the range of quality and choice of services for customers, extension of telecom services to un-served and underserved areas and encouragement of fair competition among operators," he said.
Awais told Mr Yoshio the success of the policies was also reflected in the sector growth statistics which showed $ 1.13 billion revenue generation from auction of frequency spectrum in the mobile cellular and wireless local loop sectors while the fixed telephony grew from 4 million in 2003 to 5.9 million in 2005, mobile subscription from 2.4 million in 2003 to almost 19 million in 2005, overall tele-density from 4.63 per cent in 2003 to about 15 per cent in 2005.
He said the number of mobile operators had also gone up with six in mobile cellular sector, 92 in wireless local loop while 12 in the long distance international area. He said the government had also facilitated the sector by bringing down installation charges by 60 per cent in rural areas and 73 per cent in urban areas, decreasing monthly line rent by 33 per cent and reducing the monthly bandwidth charges to $ 2000 per megabit.
The minister said the government was still pursuing various initiatives for the telecom sector including a multi-billion universal service fund to meet the research and development needs for long-term growth of the ICT sector besides ensuring development of requisite infrastructure, human resource development, increased industry-academia collaboration for the sector. "Our aim is to ensure coverage and affordability as we reach out to all nooks and corners of the country," he added.
He said the government had also adopted redundancy measures to strengthen international connectivity by adding the country's systems to SMW 4 and TWA cable while three companies in the private sector was also in the process of establishing their own backbone network. He said some of the other initiatives of the government included mobile number portability, implementation of equipment identity register to check mobile thefts and a consistent consultative process with stakeholders.
ITU) Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi said he was thoroughly impressed with the "good work" done by Pakistan in recent years in the telecom sector. He said he was particularly impressed with the idea of universal service fund which had not been implemented even the advanced countries of Europe. "I believe this is a very good step and would help the industry sustain itself besides ensuring availability of telecom services in all parts of Pakistan," he said.