ISLAMABAD: The broadband subscriptions in the country depicted a growth over 40 percent during last year, reaching 3.79 million subscribers mark as compared to 2.72 million during 2013. This means 1.07 million new subscribers joined broadband networks during the year. A latest statistics issued by regulator Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) remained a major player in providing broadband services and it has been successful in getting major share of broadband market by providing multitude of services and technologies under its umbrella.
Ranging from ownership of international optical fiber links to availability of both fixed (DSL) and wireless (EvDO) broadband services, PTCL maintained a stronghold on almost every facet of the broadband market.
Currently, PTCL has 80 per cent share of the subscriber base, consisting of 3.03 million subscribers including fixed and wireless broadband services.
The strength of the incumbent can be gauged from the fact that the net additions of PTCL i.e. 1,106,025 are actually more than that of the entire broadband sector combined.
EvDO has been the main reason behind this growth due to 827,496 new subscribers added during 2014.
The stats revealed that growth rate of the broadband industry had been gradually declining with every passing year, however, the trend has reversed during 2014. This is also supplemented by the fact that for the first time, broadband market has added over a million subscribers in a fiscal year which is a welcome sign for future.
With regard to market share, the stats further revealed that Wi-Tribe has 182,854 subscribers by end of June 2014 as compared to 199,786 subscribers in June, 2013 declining by 8.5pc.
WorldCall, despite having a variety of broadband technologies i.e. DSL, HFC and EvDO, has 183,094 subscribers as of June 2014 with growth of 1.5pc.
Qubee made a promising start in the broadband market last year but dropped its market share from 2.3pc last year to 2pc in June, 2014 with 76,926 subscribers.
Other companies constitute the remaining 1.2pc of the market.
The subscriber wise status of broadband technologies in the country during last six years showed that EvDO has been leading the market with 1,861,118 subscribers, surpassing the DSL subscriber base of 1,346,817 by a clear margin during 2014.
After an impressive start in 2008, WiMax has been losing subscribers for the last two years reducing currently to 530,889.
HFC remained on the bottom line with 37,011 subscribers at the end of June 2014.
Wateen, the next big operator, has 7.2pc market share signifying the huge space between PTCL and other operators in the market. Subscriber base of Wateen stands at 273,794 at the end of June 2014, depicting a drop of 2.6pc due to subscriber churn.
PTCL’s performance had a major impact on the market position of Wi-Tribe and WorldCall as equal market share of 4.8pc gives them the joint third spot in broadband.
