Abstract:
Payphone industry is ideally positioned to exploit the opportunities that will be
available in the post deregulation scenario. The new telecom (deregulation) policy
was announced in July 2003. The government has started issuing licenses for
Long Distance and International telephony as well as Local Loop licenses in early
2004. payphone operators are actively interacting with the regulators and other
market players in the run up to the award of licenses in order to ensure that the
interests of private sector operators are given due consideration with the
implementation of new policy.
The objective of the report is to assess the Payphone tariffs with a fresh view of
rationalizing the tariffs while keeping in view the legitimate concerns of the
stakeholders involved.
In order to determine ways to rationalize the payphone tariffs and providing relief
to the consumers, the analysis and deliberation has been kept relevant to the tariff
related issues only and other concerns of Payphone operators are not discussed to
remain objective. However, a few recommendations are being suggested without
going into details. These recommendations if implemented are expected to have
positive impact on the payphone sector of Pakistan while providing relatively
cheaper basic telephony services to consumers.
