ISLAMABAD – Mobile users won’t be able to access the Google Play Store services in Pakistan starting December 01, 2022. This is because the State Bank of Pakistan has canceled the $34 million payment to international service provider, it was revealed.
SBP suspended Direct Carrier Billing (DCB), so $34 million per year was paid through mobile companies to international service provider, such as Google, Amazon, and Meta.
Pakistani customers will have to download Google and international Apps in order to pay with debit cards or credit cards. However, the credit card facility is only available to a limited number of customers so most mobile users will not be able to download Apps from Google Play Store.
The Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and four cellular mobile operators (CMOs) unanimously wrote a joint letter to the State Bank of Pakistan on Friday, making a request to reverse its decision of revoking the DCB mechanism for payment of dollar fee keeping in view the liquidity crunch being faced by the country.
Top sources confirm to The News Google services, such as downloading Apps, will not be available. They informed the relevant authorities that they owed $34 million. If the amount is not paid, their services for downloading the Google App Store will be discontinued.
The four mobile operators wrote a joint letter to government stating that the telecom sector is one of the largest contributors to foreign direct investments, along with other significant contributions in tax, duties, and other levies.
It cannot be overlooked the importance of the telecom sector for expanding Digital Pakistan’s agenda. Pakistan’s digital transformation is intended to benefit all social and economic sectors and thus needs engagement and facilitation from all stakeholders.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), revoked the IT designation of telecom operator months ago. Further, it was recommended to route all cases to SBP on an individual basis for approval. The mobile operators reported that they faced severe delays in getting approvals. This led to disruption in critical services. These companies support the company with IT and digital infrastructure management.
Pakistan’s digital economy is heavily dependent on foreign service providers. These include licenses to use cloud platforms, security features, licensing, and hosting. In many cases, technical expertise to improve the skills of local workers in order to comply with international standards.
All the major players like Google, Amazon & Meta, etc. are being impacted because of non-payment and are most likely to discontinue their services the impact of which will be reflected in terms of telecom and internet users being unable to fulfill their needs from digital platforms including digital banking, e-Commerce, e-Education, e-Health that uses cloud infrastructure and gets licenses for both applications as well as web-based platforms that are being badly impacted. Distribution & monetization of digital platforms will become extremely challenging considering lack of distribution support and interest from the market leaders like Google, Amazon, and Apple representing Facebook. Digital marketing is the most effective channel for all brands, products & services will shrink drastically or become unavailable, thus, impacting brands, services and products beyond the digital space.
“Any potential outage of such digital services due to non-payments would create a lot of negativity in the world about Pakistan in this age of social media and should be avoided at any cost,” stated the letter.
The letter concluded: “It is pertinent to mention here that we all understand the prevailing challenge of worsening economic conditions of the country and thus are open to working in an amicable way with the Regulator (SBP); as we are already working with them in case of the telecom sector imports related transactions to navigate through these testing times.”