MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Pakistan
Index
In the 1980s, considerable effort was made to upgrade
the
telecommunications system. The Sixth Five-Year Plan, for
instance, called for a public-sector investment of Rs10.1
billion
to improve and expand the telephone and telex systems. In
the
mid-1990s, all overseas telecommunications used the
Intelsat-VI
satellite of the International Telecommunications
Satellite
Organization. There were also plans to launch a Pakistani
satellite based on very small aperture earth stations,
which
would provide nationwide coverage for domestic
telecommunications. The number of telephone connections
increased
from 461,000 in June 1984 to 1.6 million in March 1993,
when the
government announced that the Pakistan Telecommunications
Corporation would be privatized. A new entity, the
National
Telecommunications Network, was planned to assume
responsibility
for the government's own network.
Radio and television are dominated by government
corporations. The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC)
has a
monopoly on radio broadcasting. In March 1992, there were
705,000
licensed radios, but the actual number of radios in use
was
estimated at 10 million. The PBC operates twenty-four
medium-wave
and three short-wave transmitters for its domestic
programs and
two medium-wave and eight short-wave transmitters for its
external service. There are six networks for domestic
service--one national network and the five regional
networks for
Balochistan, the Islamabad Capital Territory, the
North-West
Frontier Province, the Northern Areas, Punjab, and Sindh.
The
external service broadcasts in fifteen languages--Arabic,
Burmese, Bengali, Dari, English, Farsi, French, Gujarati,
Hindi,
Indonesian, Swahili, Tamil, Turkmen, Turkish, and Urdu. An
important target audience is Pakistanis working in the
Middle
East. Azad Kashmir Radio, a separate government-run
organization,
broadcasts in Azad Kashmir.
In early 1994, the government-controlled Pakistan
Television
Corporation (PTV) carried programs produced in five
centers--
Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta.
Programming
comes under the purview of the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, and goals include providing wholesome
entertainment, promoting national solidarity, and
projecting an
Islamic way of life. In November 1992, PTV began
broadcasting on
a second channel made possible by Japanese financing and
technology. This channel is intended mainly for
educational
purposes. A commercial station was also established in the
early
1990s and provides competition for PTV. In 1993 it was
estimated
that there were over 2 million television sets, and the
number is
expected to climb steeply in the 1990s. The main PTV
channel is
capable of reaching 87 percent of the population, while
the
second channel is accessible to 56 percent of the
population.
Data as of April 1994
|
|