Pakistan: The Tech takeover

June 4, 2007 6:16 pm 6 comments

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Third world countries have always remained bastion of poverty and deprived of modern technological benefits. Now please don’t think that this article is about Poverty or any related issues. This is surely a piece of writing related to technology. The points which I’ll discuss in this post relates to what I’ve seen and observed carefully.

Pessimistic people are generally very much skeptical of the penetration of technology into common Pakistani masses. They are spreading this so-called “dis-information” to the whole world. A few weeks back, an article of one such journalist was discussed on G & W. The article was wrong in its premise, simply because we cannot compare ourselves with the technology giants of the world. Still, the Pakistani tech scene is not as grim as portrayed by that guy.

Modern technology has made substantial inroads into the lives of common Pakistanis. Here are some cases in point: The use of cellular phones has reached astonishing heights. Everyone from a sweeper and a housemaid to a well off business professional, all are proud owners of mobile phones.

Even in so many villages, cellular technology is gaining popularity. There are around 50 million mobile phone customers in Pakistan and add to this more than 5 million landline connections. The population of Pakistan is around 167 million so the tele-density is around 33%. This is a much better figure as compared to India where it’s around 11% (computed by data available from CIA World Factbook). The cable TV connections also bears testimony of the massive infiltration of modern technology in Pakistan.

The use of mp3 players has seen a massive growth among the middle class of Pakistan. Then there is the phenomenal success of FM mobiles. If you happen to travel in a public transport, you’ll see every third person from a student to a peon listening to different FM channels.

Whatever I’ve discussed above are the indicators of tech penetration in the middle and lower classes of Pakistan. Undoubtedly, poverty is also on the rise in Pakistan but the use of technology too is alive and kicking. As far as the nouveau Rich are concerned, we all know that Pakistan is experiencing a tremendous growth of telecom and IT. The era of broadband and DSL is almost over for the professional classes and they are waiting to switch over to WimaX and other modern technologies. I’ll limit my discussion here as our readers are more aware then me about the tech scene of Pakistan. So the crux of the matter is that Pakistan is not far lagging behind in technological progress. We, as proud Pakistanis have to portray the bright side of the picture to the outside world.

Next I will talk about how tech is helping people on the lowest economic brackets of society.

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