Umair Saeed

Broad Band and Economic Development

Broad Band and Economic DevelopmentThe future of a country is often directly related to

that community’s public infrastructure.

Good schools, adequate roads and transportation, access to affordable health care, and quality of life factors such as parks and cultural venues play a role in whether communities will attract new businesses and residents and be vibrant.

Economic research shows that public infrastructure investment is a powerful driver of business productivity, investment, and economic growth.

High-speed broadband internet access essentially empowers citizens, especially those living in remote regions of the country through provision of services such as education (distance learning), healthcare (telehealth/telemedicine), e-government, e-businesses, e-agriculture and e-commerce.

Communities without broadband service will wither and be left behind as firms and jobs move to regions – either elsewhere

Information Communication Technologies (ICT) sector is considered as an engine for overall socio-economic development of countries across the globe.

A deeper analysis of the growth patterns and correlative contributions of ICT in a number of countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, China and India, reveals that rapid socio-economic development in these economies significantly accelerated due to efficient and cost effective access to information.

Global Trends of Broad BandThere are about 400 million broadband

subscribers worldwide Half of them are using fixed line broadband

including copper twisted pair, coax or fiber to home etc.

The best performing economies where fixed teledensity was higher, copper is contributing only 35- 40% of their total market

Rest of the market is on Wireless Broadband solutions.

Indian government has proposed to offer free, high speed broadband connectivity across the country by 2009-12 .

"e-Taiwan" plan aims to expand broadband users to 6 million by year 2008-13, achieving almost 100% penetration

Korea's high-speed broadband penetration is nearing 80 per cent of households while connection speeds have reached 40 Mbps per connection.

Malaysia has unveiled an ambitious plan to roll out high speed broadband services across the country, the plan targets to cover 2.2 Million premises (50 % penetration by Year 2010).

Philippines’ ICT Road Map targets 100 % broadband penetration in key cities and 50% in the rest. Thailand though having much better penetration, is on its way to similar goals.

Broad Band Landscape in Pakistan Broadband penetration targets envisioned

by Broadband Policy 2004 have not been achieved.

Continuing on this rate, we may end up having a customer base of about 0.4 million by 2012.

Since the current city / region wise teledensity and subscriber base is very low, therefore not a single area/city appears to be sufficiently served.

Growth Pattern of Internet Subscriber in Pakistan

PTCL 32171

NTC 1820

Cybernet 9075

Multinet 3048

Micro Net 8000

Max Net 5317

Nayatel 1070

WOL 6100

World Call 36356

Comsat 1545

Brain Tel 755

NexLinx 1865

Dancom 7288

Service Providers Contribution to Broad Band

Connections

Broad Band Subscriber by Profession

• Country’s Existing Broad Band infrastructure available is owned by Incumbents' Local Loop Copper Access

• Only 4 person out of 10 have access to basic telephone

• Maximum 10% to 15% of total copper pairs could be used for fixed broadband service.

• Hence Existing copper can support hardly 0.5M broadband users over a period of 3-5 years

As per Research Report from Ericsson, soon After 2010 BB users would exceed 1 Billion Mark with a population of 6 Billion

Every sixth person will be having access to Broad Band

Comparing this situation with that of Pakistan, for population of 160 million there should be 27 Million Broad Band connections

But with our Growth Rate of BB connections, we can have only 0.4 Million in 2012.

Gaps to be bridgedCapacity availability at the core of the

networkOptical pipes must be incremented

International Routes must be diversified

Quality Access to the userFor Rural and dispersed population, Wireless

solutions can be effective For Urban, upgraded wired network is

essential for delivery of bits to the premises