Submitted by Mike Grenville on Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:46

Text messgaing and the internet have once again taken off as a way to share news with the closure of the TV news following the declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan.

Following the emergency rule declaration by President Musharraf, an edict that bans anything that defames or ridicules him, state officials or the army, and threatens violators with up to three years in jail or a fine of 10 million rupees ($166,700). This took TV and cable broadcasters off the air on Saturday evening when they first started to report that military ruler President Pervez Musharraf was about to impose an emergency -- which he did minutes later. Cable station Geo TV sent an SMS to mobile phone users on Sunday telling them to log on to its website to see its reports streamed online. This has proved so popular that the sites server are under strain and the main site has reverted to a 'light text-version' to reduce bandwidth usage.

There are between three and five million Internet users among Pakistan's 160 million-strong population, service providers say, up from less than one million in 2001.

Mobile subscribers have taken off rapidly after moving from a regulated state-owned monopoly market. By mid-2005 there were said to be over 11 million mobile subscriber up from less than 2 million in 2002. This then took off growing by almost 170% in 2005, and the mobile subscriber base reached 22 million (14% penetration) in early 2006. The surge in numbers continues s to 68.004 million mobile subscribers in August 2007 up from 65.650 million in July, according to figures from Pakistan Telecommunications Authority.

Bloggers report that Saturday 3rd November saw the highest ever number of SMS sent with an average of 10 text messages being sent across the networks per subscriber.

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