Pakistan Ranked Number 4 For Number of SMS sent per Subscriber

A PTA Report on SMS traffic trends in local and global markets says that a total of 151.6385 billion text messages were exchanged by Pakistani cellular subscribers in fiscal year 2009-10, generating a revenue of Rs. 40.76 billion.

This figure translates into 1532 SMS per subscriber in an year or 128 SMS per subscriber in one month. Average price of one SMS is said to be at 27 paisas.

Report says that four billion mobile subscribers use SMS service around the world, who sent five trillion messages in 2009 i.e. approximately 105 sms per person per month.

Pakistan is ranked Number four for average number of SMS sent per subscriber in a month.

By 2013 the volume of messages will double to 10 trillion, according to Portio Research. That is, the SMS traffic will grow double in coming four years.

According to ITU, SMS traffic is generating an estimated revenue of USD 812,000 every minute (or around USD 14,000 every second) for the cellular companies from 5.3Billion users.

In 2009, SMS revenue accounted for 12% of China’s largest mobile operator’s total revenue. The Philippines and the United States combined accounted for 35% of all SMS sent in 2009.

SMS Traffic in Recent Years

In Pakistan, SMS traffic over past few years is reported as following:

2006 PK Messaging: Approximately 8.7 Billion messages

2007 PK Messaging: Approximately 22.6 Billion messages

2008 PK Messaging: Approximately 61 Billion messages

2009 PK Messaging: Approximately 151.7 Billion messages

Report says that SMS traffic in Pakistan was exchanged at an average rate of 27 Paisa (Rs. 027) per SMS in the year 2009.

Report said that 80 percent of SMS traffic utilized SMS bundles offered by cellular companies, while rest of 20 percent SMS were sent using flat rate of Rs.1/sms.

An average bundled package of 700-SMS/ Month is approximately for Rs. 60. According to these two rates, the revenue for SMS-traffic is calculated to be approximately 40.76 Billion.

Zong and Mobilink has more outgoing traffic than the incoming traffic.

Ufone has the highest SMS traffic on the network.

The out and incoming traffic of Mobilink is almost balanced in each month respectively.

Telenor has quite high incoming than its outgoing.

According to Mobilink, it has highest difference in exchange of traffic with Ufone.

Incoming traffic from Ufone is more than the sent traffic. Similarly its receiving more SMS messages from Zong than the sent messages.

Where as its sending more messages to Telenor and Warid. Ufone SMS traffic is the highest landing traffic at the Telenor network. Zong is also sending more traffic to Telenor than is receiving from it. It is interesting to note here that he incoming traffic to telenor from all other networks, except Warid, is more than its outgoing to all the networks. Zong is sending more SMS to all the operators than receiving The difference in exchange of traffic is highest with Warid, followed by Mobilink then Telenor and Ufone.

 

Winding Up Petition Filed Against Warid

Huawei International Pte Limited and Huawei Technologies Pakistan (Pvt) Limited on 23 August 2010 instituted three petitions in the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, for the winding up of Warid Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd. 

The petitions have been filed only after repeated assurances by Warid that the outstanding and admitted liabilities would be repaid”, said a statement issued by Huawei Pakistan Middle East. 

Press statement, signed by Fatima Beckmann of Huawei Middle East, said as interim measures company sought stay orders against Warid from disposing off its assets and the transfer of shares. 

It claimed that the court has granted stay orders. 

Statement said that court has also directed Warid to submit its monthly statement of income and expenses. 

Huawei claims that it is seeking from the court the appointment of a provisional manager while the petitions are pending. 

Huwaei has pleaded that Warid owes the three Huawei companies a sum far exceeding US $ 100,000,000 (US Dollars One Hundred Million) equivalent to a sum exceeding Pak Rupees 10,000,000,000.00(Pak Rupees Ten Billion). 

The Petitions will be heard by the Court in Pakistan on the 26th October 2010. 

Huawei said that following the institution of these petitions and the grant of the stay orders by the High Court, Warid and Huawei have attempted to settle the issue, as mentioned by a rejoinder published by Warid Telecom. 

However, no meaningful offer was made by Warid, and no payment has been received by Huawei, said Huawei, and this is why company is vigorously pursuing the petitions. 

Earlier, Huawei had got this public notice published in various newspapers:

 

In the meantime, Huawei has denied recent media reports by re-affirming its commitment to pursue its case against Warid Telecom. The statement said that recent media reports regarding its settlement with Warid are not true.

It was rumored that both the companies had resolved the deadlock on most of the monetary issues in a high level meeting held in Beijing.

It is interesting to note that there is no ‘Pakistan High Court’ in the country, as mentioned in Huawei’s recent most statement.

Statement further said that Warid had initiated a dialogue with Huawei to explore resolution through settlement of the issue, as it was uncovered by media reports, however through today’s statement the company has said that no agreement has been reached so far.

Huawei threw a threat to Warid by alarming that it may discontinue the services in case of non-payment by Warid.