Telecom sector is a major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Pakistan and massive losses caused by recent devastating floods are going to be felt by the entire country including Telecom sector itself.
According to initial reports, recent devastating floods in Sindh, Punjab. Kyber Pukhtoonkhwa and Balochistan besides washing away and destroying standing crops in large areas besides massive losses to the tune of Rs 17 billion to the telecom sector.
The floods have destroyed, damaged and uprooted infrastructure and equipment including towers, equipment, optical fibre cable, access network, electric generators, routers and cables besides other equipment at telecom sites which have also been hugely damaged due to standing rainwater and floods of the telecom industry and it will take quite some time and huge financial resources to repair the vast damages. This will also result in the increase in the prices for the customers as the companies try to recover their losses..
According to the Federal Ministry of IT and Telecom, more than 3800 telecom sites and networks in the flood hit areas were adversely affected by the floods and all of these sites have since been restored.
Companies which were badly hit by the recent catastrophe included Telenor, Zong, Jazz and Ufone and suffered losses to the tune of Rs 5448.00 million, Rs 851.3 million, Rs 7540.000 million and Rs 469.200 million respectively. The country’s top services provider PTCL suffered losses of Rs 2283.84 million.
All the telecom operators had submitted reports about their losses as per directives of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA )which then had submitted a report to the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication.
