Over 89% of population covered with mobile phone networks
By Asim Hussain

ISLAMABAD—Over 89 per cent of population has been covered with mobile phone networks in addition to availability of fixed and WLL services in the country.
According to an annual report issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), all mobile phone operators have been increasing their networks to number of cities and more than 6,000 towns and cities have now mobile networks by one or all operators. Out of 376 tehsils across Pakistan, 290 have been covered with mobilenetworks, showing almost 77 per cent of total tehsils covered. Minimum numberof tehsils covered are in Balochistan where only 20 out of 84 tehsils have cellular service, the report said. The cell sites have also increased by large number over the years as total sites of all mobile operators are more than 13,500 that were less than 2,000 sites in 2004. It stated that more than 200 sites have been erected in AJK by fourlicensed operators while Punjab has the most cell sites among all the provinces, since it is the most populated province.
Total franchises of the operators are also increasing in order to support the growing number of subscribers and for better penetration of operators into newly covered areas. Today 1,619 franchises are working inPakistan representing one or the other operator.
In the recent years, total traffic on the mobile networks grew mainlydue to reduction in call tariffs, per second billing and increased new subscription.
The report further stated that the local as well as international incoming and outgoing minutes increased significantly although local outgoing traffic to fixed network was far lower than local outgoing. There were 3,981 million outgoing minutes to fixed networks in 2007 where as 16,568 million were total outgoing minutes to mobile networks.
Such a huge difference between traffic to mobile and fixed network was mainly due to larger subscriber base of mobile network in comparison to fixed network. Total incoming traffic both incoming and outgoing on mobile networksduring this period was 2,431 million minutes, out of which maximum traffic was generated by Mobilink followed by Ufone. Warid had third highest international minutes terminated and originated from its network.