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The year 2022 was a very rough year for Pakistan. The nation was hit by devastating floods that badly affected tens of millions of people. Macroeconomic indicators took a nose dive as political instability reached new heights. In the middle of such bad news, Pakistan saw installation of thousands of kilometers of new fiber optic cable, inauguration of a new high bandwidth …
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on January 1, 2023 at 4:30pm — 143 Comments
Digital transactions in Pakistan soared 31.1% to Rs. 88 trillion or $500 Billion in fiscal year 2020-21, according to the nation's top central banker. “If the figure is $500 billion now, you can imagine the pace at which we are digitizing,” said Dr. Baqir Raza, Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, adding that those transactions showed a year-on-year growth of 30.6% in volume and 31.1% in value. The nation's central bank also reported that the large-value payments segment, known as…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on February 20, 2022 at 11:00am — 15 Comments
Broadband subscriptions in Pakistan have soared from 2 million in 2012 to 100 million now, according to the country's telecommunications regulator. Ookla, recognized globally for its broadband speed testing, reports that Pakistan's average broadband download speed is 11.35 Mbps, while its upload speed stands at 10.7 Mbps. Thousands of kilometers of new fiber optic cable is being installed and mobile data usage in Pakistan has recently surged to 8,000 petabytes. Smartphone sales are also…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on April 6, 2021 at 10:30am — 28 Comments
Haroon and Hamza Choudhry, born in rural Pakistan, are teaching artificial intelligence (AI) American high-schoolers. Twenty-something Choudhry brothers were 8 and 6 when they came from Pakistan to the United States in 1998. They have co-founded "AI For Anyone", a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization that sends volunteers to teach…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on August 19, 2020 at 12:07pm — 3 Comments
Pakistan Federal Board of Revenue has recently announced that “Sales Tax and Income Tax at import stage has been drastically reduced in case of smartphones of Rs15,000 or below". This action was apparently taken after Digital Pakistan Initiative led by…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on January 22, 2020 at 11:00pm — 64 Comments
Pakistan's average mobile broadband speed of 13.1 megabits per second is the fastest in South Asia, according to Ookla Global Speed Test Index 2017. Mobile broadband speeds in other South Asian countries are: Myanmar 11.7, Nepal 11, Sri Lanka 9.3, India 8.8 and Bangladesh 4.97.…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on December 12, 2017 at 8:00pm — 9 Comments
Caramel Tech Studios, a Lahore-based mobile games company founded by three Pakistani brothers, is starting a new San Francisco startup, Fizz, that promises to do real-time translation for text chat in mobile games, according to a report by Dean Takahashi in VentureBeat. Mobile games market represents a huge and rapidly growing lucrative opportunity for Pakistani game developers and…
ContinuePakistan's mobile broadband operators are offering download speeds of 11.7 Mbps, more than twice faster than neighboring India's 5.14 Mbps as measured. 3G/4G/LTE Subscriptions are rising rapidly at a rate of about a million a month since the initial rollout in late 2014 brining the total number of subscribers to 41.72 million as of May, 2017. Growing availability and rising speeds are enabling many new Internet applications that are increasing access to education/training, financial…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on July 3, 2017 at 10:00pm — 4 Comments
Uber, the rapidly growing San Francisco based behemoth known for its taxi app, appears to be getting ready to launch its service in Lahore, Pakistan, according to media reports.
A report in Tech In Asia points to the career page on Uber website that shows openings for “general manager”, “operations and logistics manager”, and a “marketing manager,” for Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on October 27, 2015 at 9:00pm — 12 Comments
Even before 3G and 4G roll-outs, Pakistan's mobile data users enjoy an average bandwidth of 1.5 Mbits/sec and peak bandwidth of 14.7 Mbits/sec, according to a report published by Akamai Technologies, Inc. The Akamai data includes usage from smartphones, tablets, computers, and other devices that connect to the Internet through mobile network providers. The only mobile broadband option available to…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on July 3, 2014 at 10:15am — 2 Comments
Spurred by a favorable regulatory and technology environment, Pakistan is witnessing dramatic growth in branchless banking, according to a March 14, 2012 report by the State Bank of Pakistan.
Here are some of the key indicators contained in the State Bank report:
1. Number of branchless banking accounts jumped 40 percent to 929,184 in October-December 2011 (Second quarter of FY2011-12) from the preceding…
ContinueAdded by Riaz Haq on March 16, 2012 at 9:13pm — 13 Comments
Added by Riaz Haq on August 27, 2008 at 9:44pm — 15 Comments
Added by Riaz Haq on May 8, 2008 at 10:03pm — No Comments
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Pakistani student enrollment in America's institutions of higher learning rose 16% last year, outpacing the record 12% growth in the number of international students hosted by the country. This puts Pakistan among eight sources in the top 20 countries with the largest increases in US enrollment. India saw the biggest increase at 35%, followed by Ghana 32%, Bangladesh and…
ContinuePosted by Riaz Haq on April 1, 2024 at 5:00pm
Pakistan's agriculture sector GDP grew at a rate of 5.2% in the October-December 2023 quarter, according to the government figures. This is a rare bright spot in the overall national economy that showed just 1% growth during the quarter. Strong performance of the farm sector gives the much needed boost for about …
ContinuePosted by Riaz Haq on March 29, 2024 at 8:00pm
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