Additional 9.7 million connections were sold despite the severe regulatory measures of PTA and stiff competition between telecom operators. The number of subscribers in Pakistan had jumped to 108.8 million by June 2011. The subscribers in Pakistan were 99.185 million in June 2010. Therefore the tele-density witnessed a 5% growth and it has increased to 65.4%.
According to analysts, the cellular sector is getting support from the multiple subscriptions trend. Different companies have different attractive offers in different categories due to which public keeps multiple SIMs for availing the most attractive offer of each company. The use of dual SIM handset is also increasing very speedily.
In April this year, PTA had informed the cellular phone operators to ensure that all the SIM cards get registered against the identity cards of their customers. On 17th April 2011, the unidentified SIM cards were blocked, resultantly. The number of unidentified blocked SIMs reached around 1 million. To rectify this, the drive of cellular operators is still continuing due to which more blocked SIM cards are getting registered against the CNICs.
At present, the cellular companies are trying to penetrate their services, such as easy-load, SIM and scratch cards, into the rural and underdeveloped urban areas of Pakistan because the use of cellular phone is increasing more in these areas as compared to the developed area of country. Also, though the regulatory measures are stiff, but operators are expanding their networks significantly. In this chapter, Zong is the star performer of the fiscal session 2010-11 as it got 4.22 million new subscribers. The current base of its subscribers has reached 10.9 million. Telenor stood next to Zong and it added 2.86 million new customers while increasing its customer base to 26.6 million.
Mobilink has again maintained its market leader rank during the fiscal year 2010-11. The base of Mobilink subscribers reached 33.3 million and it included 1.17 million new customers to its base. Ufone and Warid respectively brought 0.976 million and 0.456 million new customers, their subscribers are 20.5 million and 17.3 million at present.