The PTA Report: 2007

Reports are a plenty - but this is one that serves the solitary purpose of showing how far behind Pakistan is as compared to the global IT industry. The UK, despite its staggering connectivity, has recently been condoned for "slow appraisal." But Pakistan, being Pakistan, is what one could call, a phenom in all the wrong senses.

Here's a brief - I would post the entire report, or even link to it, but then again, you'd fall off laughing - given that you are reading this at work, we really wouldn't want people asking you to shut up, or to control your laughter - or maybe even to get back on your chair.

The report quite distinctly claims that Pakistan has 3.5million Internet subscribers. It goes a step further, proudly boasting 79,000 "broadband" users. Now, I'm no Pascal Blaise, but in a country of 120-170million (depending on which population census you are willing to believe) 3.5mil stands out - but for what? What percentage is that again? Lets take it a step further - 79,000 broadband users? Bravo son - of course, given that we're the only country in the world that categorizes a 32k connection as broadband, you have to wonder where these numbers are popping up from. 3.5m, less 79k dial-up users (assuming that the Pakistani definition of dial-up is what the industry thinks it is)

Now, as much as I try to convince myself that there isn't more than the accepted 2% error in these numbers, conscientiously, I just can't. For one, this is a country where our census declarations are off by at least 50million - in a scenario where you just have 3.5million users, can you imagine the error rate? So how many broadband subscribers shall we call it at? I'm going to be generous, and define my limit at 20,000 - given that most packages above 256k come at a monthly expense greater than the per capita income.

Wateen's WiMax is supposed to support a million subscribers - one of the more ambitious introductions by an organization into what is a shambles of an industry - given the organizations pre-launch, it doesn't really leave one with much hope - given the adherence to "rip off the customer" credo, it doesn't sound the least bit viable. But then again, heres to an Xmas miracle!