MyAdhan Blog

Link: SIM Nation: 76.6 Million Mobile Subscribers in Pakistan? Could this be right? Is this good?

Babar Bhatti reports on his blog State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan that in 2007 the total number of mobile subscribers in Pakistan reached 76.6 million. He is reporting from an interesting statistical compilation of achievements compiled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA); (more number from this report are included below). I ask the questions I do in the headline not out of cynicism but out of very honest inquisitiveness. I deal a lot with development related statistics in my professional work and for many reasons the number seems rather surprising to me. It probably is that the meaning of subscriber here is different from what I would have expected or that I am unfamiliar with the specifics of how this number is calculated and what it signifies. If so, I am eager to learn. I also wonder to what extent massive growth in mobile phone subscribers is necessarily good for a developing country like Pakistan? Depending on who you want to believe the population of Pakistan is somewhere around 165-140 million. Probably closer to the latter number; some estimates would suggest even higher. If subscriber means the number of unique individuals who are subscribing to a mobile service (as it would in many other development contexts) it would mean that nearly half of all Pakistanis - man, woman, child, old, young, infant, newborn - are mobile phone subscribers. Although anyone in Pakistan knows that the penetration of cellphone to all classes - including middle and lower-middle income groups - is very high, the absolute poor (and there are still a very large number) are not likely to be subscribers. It is also likely that the penetration is much less in rural areas than in urban, that it is much much less amongst the very old and should be zero or nearly zero amongst the very young. I have seen some kids (12-15 years) with cell phone of their own, but these would be mostly in the higher economic strata and it could not be a very high number. Similarly, while the phenomenon of multiple phones per family is now dominant in many middle and most higher income groups, one assumes that it is less prevalent in the lower income groups. Any set of reasonable assumptions about these are related variables would suggest that the wording from the PTC is potentially misleading. It is more likely that the number is really of the cell phone numbers issued and technically in use. The fact, however, is that many many of these issued numbers would not really be in use. However, given the SIM culture and the rather common practice of holding multiple SIM cards and numbers (I have two myself, and I don’t even live in Pakistan!) it would not be surprising that the real subscribers are much less - although a still impressive number…