day campaign through subsidizing the government tax to the consumer and a free SIM. But the market leader, Mobilink, has set its sights on hiking its customer base to four million by next year from three million or thereabouts at present. The Mobilink has also started offering a free supplementary connection to all its subscribers with a reduced tariff offer. The two other operators are Paktel and Instaphone, run by a Pakistani group in alliance with Sweden's Millicom, who had entered the market first of all, but were left far behind by Mobilink and Ufone in terms of business. One of the handicaps of these companies was that they had started with analog operations with limited network capacity while Mobilink and Ufone are based on GSM technology. Analysts see government regulation, operational shutdowns, tax burdens and too much competition in a small market as having driven them out of their initial dominant positions. Their initial foreign backers, Cable & Wireless, IWC and Motorola, did sell out and left the market. Two new players, Telenor of Norway and Al-Warid of a Dubai-based group, are soon to enter the Pakistani market, likely making the competition fiercer. There are few examples around the world where six operators in one market successfully compete and remain profitable, one analyst warned. It seems quite probable that after new players' entry, at least one and maybe two firms will go out of business or sell out to the other competitors to consolidate their operations, he predicted. The new marketing campaign has increased the demand for cell phones sharply in just one week. The majority of the new subscribers are opting for used cell phone sets available in the market, but a good number are going for new sets. Prices in the used phone market have increased recently because of rising demand, dealers said.
