Pakistan Exchanged 176 Billion SMS in 2010

Pakistani mobile phone users exchanged 175.4 billion text messages in 2010, up from 151 billion text messages in 2009, showing a 15.66% growth in number of total SMSes exchanged, said a reported prepared by PTA.

On the contrary, number of cellular subscribers increased by mere 5.1% to reach 102.78 million by end-2010.

Report estimates total revenues generated from SMS in year 2010 was approximately Rs. 22.5 billion.

Calculation indicate that 4.7 SMS are being sent by each mobile subscriber, every day i.e.
(Approximately 5 SMS/day/subscriber) or 142 SMS per subscriber per month approximately.

It wont be out of place here to mention that not every cellular subscriber is active, depicting that this average per user per day or per month is going to be higher than this least calculated value.

SMS Traffic in Pakistan in Y2010 (Approximate)

Total SMS in Year-2010: 175.393 Billion

• Total No. Of Subscribers (Subs) end-2010: 102,777,387
• SMS per Subscriber per Month (SMS/Month/Subs): 142
• SMS per Subscriber per day (SMS/Day/Subs): Approx 5

Year Wise SMS-Traffic Growth in Pakistan for the past five Years

In the Years from 2006 to 2009 there was a tremendous rise in traffic, the year on year percentage growth was more than 90%. Research reveals that this enormous growth was due to two main factors,

• Phenomenal penetration of mobile after deregulation in the country,
• Falling SMS prices and bundled SMS offers.

This bundled SMS-offer blessing had lead the rural and bottom-of-pyramid segments to use the service instead of voice calls and hence infused an exponential rise in the percentage growth trends.

For Y2010, the Percentage-Difference-trendline seems to be relatively less exponential , which depicts that the other parameters like the mobile penetration, affordability, awareness and many other factors have reached around their optimal and are subject to less change as compared to previous years.

Operators’ SMS Share

Stats show that Ufone shared highest number of SMS sent out from its network, followed by Telenor. Mobilink’s SMS share stood at 23.32 percent to become third. Warid remained at 4th slot with Zong to become at last. Check below graph for details:

SMS Cost in Pakistan:

Average cost of SMS in Pakistan stood at 12 paisas or Rs. 0.128 per SMS in year 2010, down from 27 paisas per SMS average cost in year 2009.

Report said that almost 20% of the SMS traffic is estimated to be exchanged over flat rate. All the operators have offered different flat rates. Zong is offering the highest flat rate/SMS while the minimum flat rate is offered by Mobilink and Ufone.

Approximately 80% of the total SMS traffic is assumed to be exchanged over bundle packages. Bundle packages were usually around 700 SMS/week/subscriber in Y2010, of which we assumed 700 SMS/Month/Subscriber being utilized, this averages out around 25 SMS/ Day /Subscriber.

It was deduced that, through bundled SMS package a subscriber is paying around Rs. 33.50/month (4.79 Paisa/SMS or Rs 0.0479/SMS).