The Advent of Widespread Mobile Communication in Pakistan

For a very long time, Pakistan's population was serviced by a fragile and poorly operated telecom network. Installation and fixing of landlines was a taxing experience with disgruntled customers making numerous trips to the complaint centers before any problem could be effectively fixed. Poor technical support, expensive local and international calling charges and mismanagement all made Pakistan Telecom one of the most detested utilities in Pakistan. But all that became history with the deregulation of the communication sector in Pakistan towards early two thousand and one..The decision, which was meant to assist mostly the individuals and small businesses in Pakistan, paid off past any hopes. The substantial population of in excess of a hundred and fifty million Pakistanis was a financial motivation for mobile and cellular corporations all over the globe and in spite of licenses being handed to a good many notable international corporations, the pie was lucrative enough for each one to get pleasure from and gain substantial profits. Cellular call charges dove quickly as the competition became serious and services like incoming calls, which were previously charged heftily, soon became free. Other services like text or SMS messages became really easy on the pocket and emerged as a fresh and highly frequent style of contact. Teenagers and old people alike just could not get their fill. To further appeal to a younger subscriber base, special low charges were charged for late night calls with added markdowns available for a personally picked number on the same set-up. Internet surfing capacity on cellular phones and picture messaging were soon added and gained immense popularity.At approximately the same time, mobile phone know-how improved quickly, allowing people to carry smaller sized, more manageable phones that were fairly easy on the pocket. Smuggled and imported phones like Apple’s iPhone, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Blackberry and LG were all conveniently available and there was a cellular phone to fit any and every subscriber’s wants and price range. Chains of cellular phone merchants popped up all over the major cities with the up-to-the-minute technology purchasable a couple of months after their worldwide introduction. Chinese and resold stolen phones were also common at significantly lower prices with full malls serving similar phones. Those people, who had not subscribed to a land line in their life, now had access to economical and consistent cellular communication.Cellular phone businesses offered subscribers with a substantial number of pricing selections and packages. Generally, companies gave a pre-paid and post-paid billing selection, with hundreds of easily accessible locations to pay for bills or buy credit. Scratch cards were well circulated and were purchasable in nearly all retails super markets, huge and small. Small service providers like carpenters and brokers, who were now carrying cellular phones, could be found anywhere and saw their business grow by a sizable amount. Very swiftly a cellular phone became an important part of regular life. It was deemed as a very handy and an vital way to communicate in case of emergencies.The cellular telecommunication sector soon beat the traditional cable based fixed lines in terms of subscription and access. So speedy was the development that Pakistan was at one time the fastest growing telecommunication sector across the world. Competition between the foremost organizations forced not only cell phone communication prices to remain affordable but also tremendously improved the services provided by Pakistan Telecommunications.The Pakistani masses were not the lone beneficiaries of the telecommunication expansion in Pakistan. The business to the government from this sector grew greatly as well. Cellular phone communication providers are spreading into associated technologies, such as wireless high speed internet, as well. This means more business for these businesses and superior prices and service reliability for the communicators. With new and used PCs becoming readily obtainable and easy on the pocket, it appears as if the subsequent technological revolution in Pakistan is coming real soon