ISLAMABAD -  Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman on Wednesday said that Ministry of IT was rigorously pursuing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s vision of “Digital Pakistan”.

Addressing to the NTC Excellence Award ceremony, she said, “We believe in ubiquitous ICT development throughout the country, therefore, we are connecting the unconnected.” While sharing some key achievements, she said the ministry has achieved remarkable performance during the last three years, which was recognised not only within Pakistan, but also got worldwide appreciation. She said that resolution in favour of Pakistan’s registration by ICAAN is a landmark achievement of the ministry and the country.

She said, “In 2015, after due deliberation, we decided to designate this endeavor to NTC and request was sent to ICAAN for further consideration. ICAAN took almost one year to assess and evaluate and eventually acceded to our request. Now I hope that NTC will carry out its responsibility with utmost professionalism to host Pakistan Domain.”

She said, “Our government has always worked in collaboration and the IT ministry always worked hand in hand with private sector to materialise our goal of “Accelerated Digitisation”. "Our dream to connect whole Pakistan was turning into a reality now. We are going to announce Kohistan Lot by next week, where people of these areas will not only be provided with the fiber optic but also availability of 3G services will be ensured by the end of 2018,” she added. She also congratulated the services of NTC and the ministry’s officials which rendered selflessly, for phenomenal development of IT & Telecom sector of Pakistan during last three years.

Speaking on the occasion, NTC Managing Director Brig (R) Viqar Rashid Khan said NTC was the first operator to establish the Cloud Based Tier-III National Data Center in the public sector. During the last three years, NTC has carried out massive technical growth to extend latest Telecom/ICT services to its valued customers.

He said NTC was going to complete 100 percent of its ADP projects in time which will be a record in public sector during current fiscal year 2016-17. He said that NTC has extended its services from 54 districts to 87 districts. He said overall fixed lines telephone growth observed was 6 percent despite of decline in its general use with growth of over 36 percent in broadband. NTC was the first telecom operator in Pakistan which has recently introduced “NTC Go Smart App”, Machine to Machine (M2M) and Point 2 Point (P2P) technologies under Public Private Partnership, he added. Later, Anusha distributed awards to NTC staff and appreciated their best performance.