[Pakistan] Another ISP to be launched soon

["Irfan Khan" <KhanIA@super.net.pk>]

Date sent:      	Mon, 26 Jul 1999 07:01:28 +0500

Another ISP to be launched soon  RECORDER REPORT    

LAHORE (July 26) : World Call, a private pay phone company, has 
decided to  undertake Internet service provision for upcountry towns 
with
an initial  bandwidth of 512 Kb. "We will enhance our capability with 
the
passage of  time", said Shahid Mahmood, Chief Operating Officer of the
World Call Dot  Com Private Limited, in a brief chat with a select 
group
of journalists  here on Saturday.    

He said that the growth rate of Internet users was eight to ten 
percent  and, at present, there are only 100,000 users in the 
country. This was only  because of a small number of availability of
personal computers for the  general public.   

He said his company was also planning to enter into a joint venture 
with a  foreign company to open cyber cafes in different localities 
of the big  cities so that the students and the general public could 
have
easy access  to the Internet. He said that classified information about
different  aspects of social life would be available on the local servers
which will  later be connected to a local backbone so that the browsing
process time  could be decreased as much as possible. He said the
organisation had  decided to conduct a survey of the local market to get
first hand  information.  He said that the cost of bandwidth being offered
by PTCL were  quite high, and that was why the ISPs were not getting
considerable number  of users. Sadiq Y. Yalmaz, Chief Operating Officer of
the World Call  Payphone Limited, in a presentation on the
telecommunication operation of  the group, said that they have decided to
lower their tariff in line with  the tariffs decreased by the PTCL.
Yalmaz, whose company is operating  around 4,000 public call offices PCOs
in the country has emerged as the  largest bill-paying customer of the
PTCL. He said that their international  payphone service 'Hello' has
received tremendous response from the people,  and sales were around Rs 20
million. "Our target was not more than Rs 10  million, and PTCL was
expecting even less." He said that they have also  arranged a foreign
investment of $ 80 million under which wireless PCOs  will be established
in the remote areas of the country, where there was no  PTCL network.
Everything has been finalised in this regard. However, he  said he could
not reveal the name of the foreign partner. He said that they  had join
hands with the PTCL on the revenue-sharing basis and working on 20 
percent commission basis.   

<snip, snip>  

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http://www.brecorder.com/story/S0010/S1002/S1002104.htm