A Round-Up of Telecom Operators’ Performance in 2017

Another year has come to an end, we saw many highs and lows in Pakistan’s IT and Telecom industry. But all in all, it was a great year for our industry with significant growth and improvement in our IT exports, 3G/4G penetration, IoTs and regulatory front. In addition to that, the news of 5G testing in the country was also well received all stakeholders. We hope that the upcoming year will be even more promising, not only for our industry but also for the whole country. A Round-Up of Telecom Operators’ Performance in 2017.

Telecom Operators also witnessed rise and fall in terms of cellular subscribers. PTA published telecom indicators in terms of 3G-4G subscribers, technology and annual fixed line and wireless local subscribers. Lets Compare all four operators i.e; Jazz, Ufone, Telenor and Zong in terms of these indicators. It should be mentioned here that Among all four operators Ufone is lagging behind due to no 4G availability.

A Round-Up of Telecom Operators’ Performance in 2017

As far as annual cellular subscribers are concerned, as we expected Jazz top all the operators by having 53.54 million subscriber till November 2017.  Jazz has witnessed a phenomenal rise as it had 39 million subscriber in November 2016.

Telenor gave tough competition to Jazz and secured second position for having 41 million subscribers in November 2017. Telenor had 40 million subscribers in November 2016. Zong acquired third position for having 29 million subscriber by the end of this year. Last year Zong had 28 million subscribers which means that the company has satisfactory increase of cellular subscriber base.

Ufone got last position by having 53 million subscriber

As expected Ufone got last position by having 18 million subscribers by the end of this year. However if we compare it with last year, it had same 18.40 million cellular subscribers which clearly shows that Ufone has not improved too much.

3G Annual Subscribers:

If we compare 3G subscribers of telecom companies, Jazz undoubtedly got first position again by having around 15 million Users. Last year it had 8.9 million 3G subscribers which is evident that Jazz has witnessed a huge growth to its 3G subscriber base. Telenor stood second for having 10 million 3G subscribers however it has not improved from last year as it had same number of subscribers in year 2016.

Zong has 9 million 3G annual subscribers so we place it at thirds position. The number is improved from last year as Zong had 8.6 million subscribers. As usual Ufone came on the last slot by having 5 million 3G subscribe. The company had 4.9 million annual 3G subscribers last year which shows that its has witnessed nominal satisfactory growth in one year however failed to become the best.

4G Annual Subscribers:

Lets compare 4G subscribers of Zong, Telenor and Jazz. Zong topped the category of 4G subscribers by having 4.8 million subscribers. Jazz got second position by having 1.7 million 4G subscribers. Telenor came on last number by having 1.3 million subscribers.

This year was good in terms of IT and telecom developments however the above mentioned figures show that telecom sector need to introduce more services for their users for fast growth of their subscriber base.

Also Read: Mobile Phone Import Decline by 5.78 Percent During FY 2016-17