ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) would provide WAN platform and intranet services to National Savings Pakistan (NSP) to help further improve performance.
These services would help National Savings to facilitate its 223 branches through automation projects. The other service, NTC extending to National Savings Pakistan, is the facility of a gateway that would help in sending SMS to subscribers.
In this regard, agreements were signed by representatives of both the organizations amid the presence of NTC Chairman/Managing Director, Brig (Retd) Viqar Rashid Khan and Director General NSP, Zafar Masood.
In his brief remarks, Viqar Rashid said since its inception, the NTC has continued to provide the most innovative ICT services to all government departments.
He said secure ICT infrastructure provided by the NTC would facilitate subscribers in automating and thereby, improving its management and processes.
Highlighting the achievements during the past four years, Viqar Rashid Khan said the NTC was the first operator in Pakistan to establish a Cloud-Based National Data Center for public sector.
It had witnessed unprecedented financial growth of 359 percent during 2015-16 and an increase in broadband subscriber base by 36 percent, he added.
NTC has extended its services from 54 districts/cities to 87 including underdeveloped districts in Sindh and Balochistan.
The number of exchanges increased from 139 in 2012-13 to 260 in 2016, thereby registering an overall 87 percent increase.
The NTC utilized 99 percent of its Annual Development Programme (ADP) budget in 2016-17 and it is also the first to use M2M and P2P networks for extending fixed lines and data connectivity. It has already resumed the international gateway operations.
Large scale Wide Area Networks of CDNS, Election Commission, State Bank, AGP and other strategic organizations have been established.
It is pertinent to mention here that the NTC has also signed a Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) with Microsoft to provide SaaS in the country through its Cloud-based National Data Centre.
The NTC is pursuing strategic partnerships with private operators in the telecom industry to bring new services for its subscribers.
It has introduced new apps like Go-Smart and has extended 3G/4G mobile data connectivity to its subscribers under Public-Private Partnership.
The NTC’s future plans and projects include the establishment of a strategically vital submarine cable landing station at Gwadar as an alternate route to the existing network.
It further envisions expanding its network to all districts of Pakistan within the next 3 to 4 years. NTC is also managing Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for Urdu and local languages.
The NTC will continue to serve through reliable and secure telecom infrastructure to safeguard against cyber threats. NTC is committed to achieving `Digital Pakistan’ – a vision of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Zafar Masood said the government had embarked on a program to revamp and modernize centers of Pakistan National Savings throughout the country to provide modern-day facilities to the stakeholders as well as clients.
He expressed thanks to NTC for extending WAN platform/intranet services to National Savings Pakistan and said the agreements would help further improve NSP’s performance.
Source: APP/DND
