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Awais sees 100m mobile phone users by 2010

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information Technology, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari Friday projected a growth of 100 million mobile phone users within next three years due to what he called "a hunger for telephony and innovative services being introduced by operators."

He said a fast-paced progress and investment trends in the telecom sector were likely to continue for the next few years with major benefits accruing to the phone users.

He stated this while unveiling CM Pak Limited - a company launched by China Mobile to run the erstwhile Paktel's operations in Pakistan. "The entry of world's largest telecom company China Mobile into Pakistan's telecom market sends the right kind of signals for the nature of healthy competition and innovative services, the phone users are going to benefit from in the coming years," he added.

He opined that while mobile companies were expected to be embroiled into a stiff competition in the days ahead, the ultimate winners would be market players excelling in content provision which had the potential to drive the appetite for phones in coming years.

He said the launch of CM Pak was a historic occasion as it was for the first time that China Mobile had come out of China to invest into another country and it also marked a shift in the attitude of Chinese companies which had begun to invest in the service-based sector in Pakistan instead of looking merely for contracts for providing vendors' services. Mr Awais observed that while the progress in telecom sector owed largely to the general appetite for better telephony, the credit was also due for the transparent policies introduced in the sector.

"At no stage during the deregulation process or afterwards, there was any effort from any quarters within the government to bend rules and reward a sweetheart company or individual. app

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