Regulatory Issues in Pakistan Telecommunication

Growth in telecom infrastructure and provision of modern telecom services to consumers at a cost based tariff helps growth of national economy. Modern telecoms serve as the engine of growth of national economy. Following the global trends of liberalisation and deregulation in telecoms monopolies which have thus far been providing inefficient communication at a greedily high tariffs are falling apart. Mergers in telecoms are not for increasing the size of the monopoly but to provide more efficient and cost effective services to the consumers. In Pakistan the erstwhile T&T department played a needful role at its time. Conversion of the department into a corporation and then into a company were steps necessary for following the global trends. Need now is to continue this trend further, eliminate the monopolistic approach by allowing more players in the field thus permitting the market forces to decide the provision of better quality of modern services at competitive price. In this paper, an attempt is made to specify the fundamental objectives of public policy which should govern the supply of telecommunications facilities in Pakistan. The economic perspective for the sector implies that the past approach towards the telecommunication policy in Pakistan was flawed and had required a drastic strategic change.