The Latest WLL and Fll scene in Pakistan - IT Insight :: IT & Telecom magazine covering Asian & Gulf's IT&T market (Publishes every month from Islamabad/Rawalpindi - Pakistan). Giving special insight to Pakistan's IT and Telecom industry

PTA awarded two types of licenses to the Local Loop services providers under the deregulation policy, Fixed Line Local Loop (FLL) and Wireless Local Loop(WLL) during 2004-2005.Out of the total of 61 companies, 17 have been awarded WLL licenses and 34 are holding FLL licenses. At present, 3 companies of the FLL license holders, Worldcall Broadband, Worldcall Multimedia and Brain Limited have started operations in specified telecom regions in addition to PTCL and NTC. The other companies are in the phase of planning and building their infrastructure. Local loop companies are also interconnecting their services with the LDI companies. These companies can not sustain in the long run if they keep their subscribers within the local-loop i.e. the region they've acquired licensed of. No telecom system in the world can survive in isolation; it has to be integrated with global telecom setup.

During 2004-5 Pakistan's fixed line tele-density increased by 3.43% showing 50 % growth as compared to 2001 in which it was just 2.28%. However NWFP and Balochistan still lack behind in the fixed line tele-density as marginal increase has been observed in these provinces. The main reasons behind this digital division between the provinces according to PTA annual report (2005) may be smaller markets and lower literacy rate.

Although the new companies are trying hard to attract new customers, Pakistan's telecom giant PTCL on the other hand is still facing an enormous pressure to meet the demands of fixed line connections. This can be because of PTCL's new promotions that include tariff reduction, lesser line rent and very less off-peak call charges. Analysts believe that PTCL offered all these attractive promotions keeping in view the competitive post-deregulation period as new FLL, LDI and WLL companies entered into the market shortly after acquiring licenses from PTA.

Some of the prominent names in local loop are Brain Limited which started its operations in Lahore with a state-of-the-art fiber optic based infrastructure. Upcoming NayaTel is also becoming an eye-opener for the local telecom market as they are planning to launch their local loop service packaged with IPTV and high speed Internet service.

Pakistan's local loop sector has much more potential as 34 companies are in the process of starting their business. According to a research done by BMI, a UK based research firm, the Access Line in Service would cross 9.1 million and fixed line tele-density may rise up to 5.9% in 2006.

In Wireless Local Loop (WLL) sector the tele-density is still very low as nearly 3 of the 17 companies awarded licenses offered their services commercially till this time. PTCL's Vfone being the market leader of WLL, GO CDMA is at the second position and then the other WLL companies are making their way towards acquiring subscribers. The WLL tele-density rate 0.17% which was achieved in few months is a positive sign for the WLL investors. Over 155 cities have been covered by WLL networks by PTCL, GO CDMA, SCO and other new operators.

Most of the WLL operators are offering and planning to offer packaged WLL. This means users can talk and use Internet on the same connection. Although these WLL companies are giving away lots of exciting features, they have to be more attractive and convincing so that users can pick WLL out of two choices - fixed line connection and a cellular phone.