Pakistan among world’s top 10 fast-growth mobile markets

KARACHI: Pakistan is one of the world’s top 10 fastest growing mobile markets and set to add 17 million unique subscribers within the next four years on lower device prices and expansion in telecom services, a report said on Monday.

Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA), in its report, said Pakistan is among the world’s top 10 countries that will account for 72 percent growth in new mobile subscribers worldwide expected in the period to 2020, “helped by improving affordability, falling device prices and better network coverage.”

London-based GSMA represents 800 mobile operators and 300 companies. The report, titled ‘Mobile Economy 2017’, projected 17 million new mobile phone subscriptions in Pakistan within the next four years.

The biggest addition of unique subscribers will be in India (310 million), followed by China (158 million), Nigeria (27 million), Indonesia (23 million), Mexico and US (21 million each), Brazil (18 million), and Myanmar and Bangladesh (11 million each).   

“By the end of 2016, two thirds of the world’s population had a mobile subscription – a total of 4.8 billion unique subscribers. There is a clear geographic shift underway, with Asia Pacific set to account for two thirds of the 860 million new subscribers expected globally by the end of the decade,” it said.

In Pakistan, number of mobile phone users crossed the mark of 137.095 million as of January 31, while mobile broadband subscribers reached 38.269 million, according to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.  

The GSMA Intelligence also tracks the social and economic implications of mobile penetration. It said Telenor Pakistan’s mobile agriculture service empowers more than two million farming households by improving access to timely and actionable information for sustainable impact through better yields and increased income for the rural family.

The service offers access to agricultural advisory information via interactive voice recording, text-messaging service and outbound alerts that notify users twice per day.

The report said digitisation of business-to-business and government-to-person payments in agriculture sector is emerging as a new opportunity to drive financial inclusion in the rural areas.

“Telenor’s partnership with Nestlé in Pakistan to digitise payments for dairy farmers through Easypaisa mobile accounts has the potential to drive financial inclusion for approximately 150,000 dairy farmers across the country.”