by Yasir Ameen
The concerns of Senate Standing Committee on 3G/4G to set $210 million are shocking for cellular operators who are already reluctant to launch new technology on their networks, amid fears of low expected earnings from the customers against heavy investment on infrastructure.
The 3G/4G licence fee is likely to thwart the regard of 2G prices if uncommon investors do participate in the bidding process to drive the base price high as number of licence are less than the expected bidding companies.
But the political leaders—Pervez Rasheed (PMLN), Haji Adeel, Ilyas Bilour of ANP, Col. Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi (retd) of MQM, Prof. Khurshid of JI recently sought after to jack up base price of new licence without taking into cognizance that cellular phone is the chief taxpaying sectors in the country with millions of people are relying on it indirectly.
Majority of the operating companies had paid $291 million for 2G licence and invested billion of rupees on marketing, sales and advertisement channels besides direct and indirect employments and handsome revenues to the government, they are being demanded to capitalize more money on new licence nonetheless, they officials of the company said.
The operating cell phone companies are the makings players for participating and adopting 3G/4G technology because these operators are possessing handsome number of subscribers on their networks as compare with new players who will have tough competition ahead in case of entry into local market.
The new entrants will shy away starting their operations in the country having stiff competition amongst five players with low earnings against high cost of operations.
The cellular companies have been started their operations many years ago, when the situation of wellbeing, economy and politics was quite stable, he said and added Pakistan was attract market six to seven years ago when they were merely six million subscribers in the market of 160 million people with two players.
The conditions have been changed entirely now and it is hard to run cellular operations with lots of challenges at the economic and wellbeing ends.
The government should facilitate existing players for launching new technology in the country rather than discouraging them with heavy fees and regulatory charges.
They should be provided concession on the licence fee and uncommon charges for the timely launch of 3G/4G/LTE in the country.