The World Bank has decided to support Pakistan with 124 million U.S. dollars for provision of telecommunication services to its rural population, 90 percent of which is still deprived of such facilities, local newspaper Dawn reported on Tuesday.

The Pakistani government had requested the Word Bank for the financial support to achieve the targets of its Universal Service Fund (USF) for extending access of telecommunications and e- services to rural areas.

The USF target features increase in the teledensity of fixed and mobile lines in rural areas to 5 percent by 2010, from the present 1 percent.

The project is set for a nod by the World Bank board by the end of September, according to official documents.

According to the World Bank, 80 million people in Pakistan have no access to telecommunication services due to uneven spread of population across the four provinces. While 41 percent of villages in the Punjab, the most densely populated province, are without telecommunications infrastructure, 94 percent of villages in Balochistan, the least densely populated province, are also suffering from the same fate.

"With such a wide geographical spread, it will take a well organized and planned effort to cover the remaining rural population during the next five years," the bank said.

The project is aimed at enabling undeserved and unserved areas to have access to voice telephony and public Internet and information services as such areas are unlikely to see sufficient private investment without appropriate financial support.

The funds would also be spent on capacity-building in policy, regulatory and spectrum management, monitoring functions and extending delivery channels of e-services to rural areas.

"Rural access needs to be improved to allow the rural area residents and businesses to take advantage of the commercial and productive opportunities by integrating them to the national economy," the bank suggested.

Pakistan's telecommunications market is now the second fastest growing in Asia after China and has attracted foreign investment of over 4 billion dollars over the past two years. But almost half of investment from July 2005 to March 2006 is attributed to the privatization of Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd (PTCL).

Despite the rapidly expanded and improved quality of service and reduced tariffs for mobile, national long-distance and international services as well as leased line services, there is limited business profitability in providing services in the rural areas, compared with the attractiveness of adding new subscribers in urban areas.

Source: Xinhua