ISLAMABAD: Thanks to bundled packages and unlimited talk time offers from all operators as the national traffic from cellular to cellular mobile networks have witnessed 40 percent increase during last year and touched 345.7 billion minutes mark and the traffic from cellular to fixed networks remained the same at 2.9 billion minutes during the same period.
Similarly, the international traffic originating from cellular mobile networks has also increased to 2.8 billion minutes as compared to 1.9 billion minutes last year, registering 47 per cent growth during 2014. However, International incoming traffic on cellular mobile networks dropped to 5.6 billion estimated minutes as compared to 9.7 billion minutes last year, depicting decline of 42 percent during 2014, a statistics issued by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) revealed .
As per details, cellular mobile operators remained actively involved in aggressive media campaigns to promote irrespective packages and introducing lower tariffs while telecom consumers remained ultimate beneficiaries of competition as they eventually got more minutes and SMS for a given amount of credit as a result of reduced tariff and lucrative offers.
With regard to trend of national and international traffic to fix and mobile networks on cellular mobile networks, the datafurther revealed that this was due to introduction of International Clearing House (ICH) which increased the call rates to Pakistan due to upward revision of Access Promotion Contribution (APC) from 2.5 US cents per minute to 8.8 cents per minute, resulting into higher tariffs for calls to Pakistan and ultimately reducing the international incoming traffic on the cellular networks.
While on the other hand, more outgoing calls from cellular networks translated into higher average outgoing minutes per subscriber per month which was 217 minutes at the end of 2014 as compared to 203 minutes at end of corresponding period last year with growth of 7 per cent. The total number of SMS exchanged over cellular mobile networks dropped to 301.7 billion during 2014 as compared to 315.7 billion last year, showing a decline of 4 percent.
Similarly, the average SMS per cellular subscriber in a month also reduced to 180 as compared to 214 last year. The rising influx of smartphones coupled with use of mobile internet, Over the Top (OTT) and social media applications such as Whatsapp, Viber, Facebook messenger etc. which allow free messaging and calls has reduced the dependence of a subscriber on traditional mode of SMS resulting into reduced number of SMS exchanges over cellular mobile networks.
