STAFF REPORT ISB: The international telecom traffic from Pakistan posted 40 percent increase last year touching 345.7 billion minutes mark and the traffic from cellular to fixed networks remained the same at 2.9 billion minutes during the same period.

Similarly, the international traffic originating from cellular mobile networks has also increased to 2.8 billion minutes as compared to 1.9 billion minutes last year, registering 47 per cent growth during 2014.

However, the international incoming traffic on cellular mobile networks dropped to 5.6 billion estimated minutes as compared to 9.7 billion minutes last year, depicting a decline of 42 per cent during 2014, show PTA statistics.

This was due to introduction of International Clearing House (ICH) which increased the call rates to Pakistan due to upward revision of Access Promotion Contribution (APC) from 2.5 US cents per minute to 8.8 cents per minute, resulting into higher tariffs for calls to Pakistan.

While on the other hand, outgoing calls from cellular networks rose to 217 minutes at the end of 2014 as compared to 203 minutes at end of corresponding period last year.

Similarly, the average SMS per cellular subscriber in a month also reduced to 180 as compared to 214 last year.

By Web Team

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