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Board of Directors of Universal Service Fund, in the 7th Board Meeting, held on January 03, 2008 gave the approval to launch project for promotion of Broadband in the country. During the meeting, a detailed presentation was given by the CEO-USF, Mr. Parvez Iftikhar on the proposal as to how USF intends to subsidize the existing Broadband Service Providers in the country through an open and transparent competitive process in order to increase the Broadband penetration in Pakistan. It is noteworthy to mention here that the USF Policy target to be achieved through this project is 1% penetration at the end of the year 2010. In this context, a Discussion -Forum was held on February 08, 2008 by Ministry of IT on ‘Affordable Broadband Availability in Pakistan’ for further exchange of views and ideas among the stakeholders.
Earlier, in November 2007, USF invited comments regarding the Concept Paper on Broadband initiative which received an over-whelming response. In this connection, meetings with most of the stakeholders, operators and ISPs were held, some of the important ones are: |
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USF is all set to provide Broadband to the un-served areas and the programme is being started from Faisalabad Telecom Region. For this purpose, USF is carrying out an on-ground study to collect information pertaining to broadband and related data for whole of Pakistan with detailed study for Faisalabad Telecom Region (FTR). The study will provide present scenario of internet (narrowband and broadband) availability, i.e. number of Internet subscribers and connections in towns, assess town/city-wise requirement of Broadband and identify the institutional beneficiaries of broadband in un-served/under-served urban areas.
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