Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has revealed that Pakistanis browse internet only for pleasure.

According to the report, the internet usage trends shows that average 4.5 million daily regular users surf only social media, Over the Top (OTT), online videos and gaming.

And about 2.5 million daily active users spend time on Facebook, making it the most popular social platform/website which handles more than 25 million accounts in Pakistan.

According to the PTA’s annual report for Fiscal Year 2105-16 (FY16), Pakistani consumed 39821 Terra Bytes (TBs) mobile broadband in FY16 in which 28535 TBs data was consumed on 3G networks while 8089 TBs was utilized through 4G/LTE networks by the consumers throughout the country
in FY16.

The remaining data (about 3196 TBs) was used by 2G users. Thus, mobile broad band penetration in the country has increased to 16 percent in FY16 from 9 percent in FY15.

Due to this growing penetration of mobile broadband, the cellular mobile operators have also started taking significant benefits by selling their data to consumers through different 3G/4G and LTE packages.

In FY16, all five mobile operators of the country sold total 39821 TBs mobile broadband data for Rs 98.83 million, representing 27 percent growth as compared to Rs 77.95 million data revenues of the cellular mobile operators in FY15.

After careful consideration, it could be said that 29.53 million mobile broad users in Pakistan paid Rs 98.83 million for online entertainment to the cellular mobile operators in FY16.

Other popular social networks in Pakistan are Twitter and Instagram that attract 0.27 million users daily, while rest of the internet users (out of average daily 4.5 million) spend their time on OTT service i.e WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, YouTube, Facebook, and Daily Motion.

Gaming is also the most preferred activity of Pakistanis on the internet as King Game (Candy Crush), Xbox Live, and Play station Network are their favorites.

It is pertinent to mention that total 32.5 million Pakistanis use internet services while the arrival of new generation technologies networks in Pakistan has made the mobile broadband most popular mode to use internet in the country.

About 29.6 million users out of total 32.5 million are mobile broadband consumers while remaining breakup according to technology consists of DSL with 1.5 million users, HFC with 43124 users, Wimax 186,770 users, FTTH 25335 users, EvDo 1.2 million and 7042 users use other means.