PTCL Double-Up And Financial Results

It has been another year of mixed results for PTCL but it is clearly getting on a stable track – Rs. 9 billion profit is not bad. Because of its breadth of coverage, it can offer some interesting services – for example see their latest Double Up package, which has been criticized by other ISPs as unfair. It would get really interesting if PTCL came up with a package offer which includes wireless (voice and/or data) as well. Ufone, its mobile phone arm has shown decent performance, though it could have done better.
In summary, anyone looking for a long term investment should consider PTCL.
PTCL’s Double-Up Unlimited Package offers:

• Unlimited On-net calls & 1Mbps broadband connectivity with unlimited downloads for monthly charge of Rs.1,999.
• unlimited on-net calls & 2Mbps broadband connectivity with unlimited downloads for monthly charge ofRs. 2,999.
• unlimited on-net calls & 4 Mbps connectivity with unlimited downloads only for monthly charge of Rs. 5,999.

Unlimited on-net local & NWD calls include PTCL to PTCL and PTCL to Vfone.
Dawn has more on PTCL financial performance.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited announced profit-after-tax amounting to Rs9.151 billion for the year ended June 30, which was in line with many analysts’ expectations.
Earning per share (EPS) stood at Rs. 1.79. The previous year, the telecom had drifted into loss of Rs. 2.825 billion, translating into loss per share of Re0.55.
The board did not announce a final dividend; the company having already paid an interim cash dividend at Rs1.50 per share.
Given substantial cash holdings, some analysts were looking forward to a bit of more with the final accounts.
The revenue of PTCL for the year under review stood at Rs. 59 billion, which represented 11 per cent decline over the revenue of Rs66 billion earned in FY08.
The dwindling of fixed line subscriber base was thought to be the factor in declining revenue, but sector analysts said that increase in international and broad-band revenues might have prevented a greater fall.

PTCL Conference Call Service

This recent ad of  PTCL Conference Call service reminded me of the fact that even though mobile telephony is very common, some other services such as conference call services have been slow to take off. What took it so long? was it the lack of demand by business?

PTCL Landline Independence Day Promotion

As everybody is going green for the upcoming Independence Day, PTCL is celebrating auspicious occasion of 14th August by announcing ‘Independence Day Promotion’ for its valued customers. These prizes will be distributed through a Lucky draw, for all PTCL Landline applicants who apply for New Telephone Connection between 24th July 2009 and 31st August 2009.

Launch Date: 24th July, 2009

Target Market:

All New PTCL Landline Customers

Key Highlights:

All Customers who apply for NTC between 24th July and 31st August will be eligible for the Raffle scheme if the following conditions are met:

The subscriber has paid his first monthly bill within due date.

The subscriber is a residential customer

The subscriber belongs to 01 connection category
Prizes:

1 grand prize of Rs 1 million

1,000 prizes of Panasonic – PTCL Branded Cordless Phones

Effective date: 24th July – 31st August, 2009

Where did PTCL’s gaming lounge go?

Exactly at a point, when I was about to write a terrible review for PTCL’s gaming lounge, I found the link dead. The gaming lounge was a part of PTCL’s entertainment portal and they had quite a few interesting games servers listed including counter strike, call of duty 4, battlefield 2 and medal of honor-allied assult.

I was excited over the weekend and tried to connect, but found out that none of the servers was actually working. I tried all the 4 games listed above, but no luck. Today I hit PTCL’s entertainment link and only thing I see is a lame site with no links working at all, named Buzz Studio.

What’s going on? I suggest PTCL should finish their sites and get their servers ready before publishing their websites. People actually do visit their sites

Gaming Lounge: PTCL Targets Youth

PTCL is on a roll when it comes to broadband growth. Over the last year it has added many new cities and expanded its DSL subscriber base. Gaming Lounge is a new value added service launched today, exclusively offered by Buzz portal to its broadband customers. It is well known that young people like to play online games, especially peer-to-peer games. With the high number of youth in Pakistan, this is a smart business move and a proven strategy to make services more sticky. Broadband providers in US have found success with similar approach of targeting young people to get broadband into more households.

Gaming Lounge Highlights

• Over 125 Online games of different genres
• Online Peer-to-peer gaming
• Free to PTCL Broadband users
• Accessible here through PTCL gaming site

Benefits

• Peer-to-Peer: Enjoy playing games online with friends and rivals alike to battle it out in terms of skill and strategy
• Multi-Genre Games: Games of all kinds of genre available for online multiplayer gaming. Strategy, action, adventure, puzzles, etc.
• Choose from over 125 games from different genres including popular multiplayer games such as MOHAA, Counterstrike, Call of Duty, etc.

PTCL Extends The Pakistan Plus Package

Following the overwhelming response of its customers Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has decided to extend further its Pakistan plus Package, which was launched in Dec 2007, as a limited time promotion.

As per details, this package will now offer PTCL customers 1,000 free nationwide minutes at the fixed monthly charge of RS. 199 with effect from 1^st August 2009. The decision has been taken to further affirm the PTCL commitment to providing innovative, cost effective and quality services to its subscribers.

PTCL Senior Executive Vice President, Commercial, Mr. Naveed Saeed said that it is our endeavor to ensure that PTCL as market leader continues to take initiative to launch new and exciting offers for its subscribers.

Other cost effective fixed line solutions offered by PTCL to its subscribers to stay in touch with their loved ones include, one on-net rate of Rs 2 per 3 minutes and International Plus package with 1200 minutes to five popular international destinations, which gives customers an affordable option for international dialing.

Mr. Naveed Saeed said that in addition to our product offerings, PTCL strives to bring Quality and Convenience to its landline subscribers by providing best quality voice, instant connectivity, 24×7 helpline, directory assistance and one Toll free number (0800-80800) for acquiring a new landline, WLL and broadband/ Smart TV connection.

Distribution Of Cellular Telecom Services In Provinces

We often talk about the overall growth of mobile telecom in Pakistan but in reality the growth is not even everywhere in the country. In this post we take a look at the geographic spread across different provinces and regions. Let’s start with tele-density, which means the number of phones per 100 persons. The chart below shows how tele-density changed in the 4 provinces from December 2007 to December 2008 (Source: PTA). Sindh leads with a tele-density of 64%, most probably because of the commercial nature of Karachi. Balochistan on the other hand has only 25% cellular penetration, most likely attributable to few urban areas and high cost of infrastructure. With the recent USF projects the situation may improve a bit as more under-served areas are getting access.

Next, let’s look at how the subscribers of mobile telecom companies are distributed across 4 provinces? The table below shows the numbers for Dec 2008. As expected Mobilink leads everywhere except AJK where Telenor has the most subscribers. Warid and Zong have most of their subscriber base in Punjab and Sindh and very few in NWFP and Balochistan. Based on this it is clear that Ufone, Telenor and Mobilink are the only true national players.

It would be interesting to see a similar breakdown of broadband services by each province. I think that the digital divide will be deeper for broadband.

How Many Broadband Users Are There In Pakistan?

PTA is trying to figure out the number of broadband users - not connections - in Pakistan. According to PTA published numbers at the end of 2008 there were 267,180 broadband subscribers (see chart at the end) in Pakistan. So there’s a new study which has been commissioned by PTA which aims to find out the number of users who benefit from one connection. After a few months we expect to get the answer to the all important question: how many broadband users are there in Pakistan? My guess is that the multiplier is between 5-10 on average (higher for workplace and lower for households and youth) so as an estimate could be over 2 million broadband users in Pakistan.

You can see the details of the RFP issued by PTA in this pdf document. Excerpt below.

Generally a broadband connection is often used by up to 20 users per connection; therefore, these broadband connection figures have only limited relevance. PTA has decided to carry out a specific survey to estimate exact figures of broadband end-users in Pakistan.

The aim of engaging the services of a consultancy firm is to come up with a current multiplier factor that can be used and applied to the number of connections in Pakistan to derive an exact number of people who have access to broadband internet and are regular users of this service.

The required “multiplying-factors” would be desirable for:

1. Fixed-line broadband services such as ADSL, HFC (Cable-Net), FTTx etc
2. Wireless broadband service-users such as WiMAX, EVDO, Satellite etc.

Primary source of collecting information would be via detail survey forms, these forms could be distributed and filled-in by the consultant by means of Internet, telephone or face-to-face interaction with survey respondent.

The document goes on to explain the survey content and the requirements for data sampling. PTA is interested in finding out about the type of connection, network info and the timing and duration of usage. Of course the first thing needed there is a clear definition of what is broadband (256Kbps is considered broadband - source).

The charts below are taken from the PTA report for end of 2008. The numbers for EVDO are based on March 2009 data.

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PTCL Wirless Broadband EVO Now in USB Device – Just Plug & Play!

Its been a while when PTCL took the initiative to provide High Speed Wireless Internet but the problem in start was the PCMCIA Device which usually did not fit all computers and Laptops. Latest laptops do not even come with PCMCIA Slot. PTCL has been talking about the USB Device to eliminate the difficulty faced by its customers who can not or do not have PCMCIA slots. But there was a delay in the launch of USB Device.

Finally, USB Device is out and being a user of PCMCIA slot device, I am not happy because I can not move my device from my computer. Its kind of fixed in there . But the good news is, most of the people now can enjoy high speed internet for very reasonable charges. Some people argues about the speed of PTCL wiress broadband but I do not completely agree. Yes, there have been some speed breakdowns lately but a lot of things depend when it comes to wirless world i.e. Poor weather, weak signal in your room, etc. etc.

At my home, downloading speed doesn’t cross 160 KBPS but at my office, I enjoy 350+ KBPS downloading speed. That’s what written on PTCL Website now (300-500 KBPS). At start they claimed that the downloading speed will be between 400-700 KBPS but the experience was bit different. Anyways, I am still happy with the device as I can enjoy high speed Internet anywhere in my city at low cost.

Please find more details about the PTCL EVO Wireless Internet Here:

http://ptcl.com.pk/contentb.php?NID=199