PTA Sets Rs. 200 as Base Price for Sale of New SIMs

[Umair Malik]

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has set Rs. 200 as base price of new SIMs in Pakistan, we have checked.

New prices will be in effect for all cellular operators from December 9th, 2016.

With this, no operator will be allowed to sell new SIMs below this base price, confirmed us a PTA spokesperson.

Before this operators could sell new SIMs at any price. They in fact used to sell SIMs for free under various promotions, to ultimately gain more subscribers.

These free SIMs also come with free resources (free minutes, SMS and MBs) of different value of up to Rs. 75 per SIM.

Selling SIMs free of cost, however, resulted in dormant SIMs as customers had the tendency of discarding SIMs after using free resources.

With new directives from PTA, now operators will have to charge Rs. 200 for each new SIM.

It is anticipated that operators will increase the value of free resources that will come with new SIMs with this new price.

It maybe recalled that all new SIMs are sold after biometric verification system. Moreover, one CNIC holder can not have more than five SIMs on his/her name.

It must be mentioned here that at least one operator opposed the decision and it might go legal against it. Unless any such thing happens, new SIMs in Pakistan will be sold at Rs. 200 from December 9th, 2016.