Dr Ishrat Appreciates NTC For Achieving Phenomenal Growth In ICT Infrastructure

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Feb, 2021 ) :Advisor to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms and Austerity Dr Ishrat Husain Friday visited the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) Headquarters, Islamabad and got a briefing on working of the corporation and National Data Centre (NDC).

NTD Managing Director Brig. (Retd.) Viqar Rashid Khan gave a detailed briefing to the advisor on performance of the NTC and NDC, a news release said.

Dr Ishrat appreciated the MD and NTC management for the phenomenal development of Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in the public sector departments without any assistance from the Federal government.

During the briefing, the MD said it had always been NTC's endeavor to provide the latest state of the art telecom and ICT services to the valued customers of all public sector organizations.

"The NTC is probably one of the few federal Organizations which has recovered from a loss making entity to a profitable organization. NTC has earned a record profit of Rs.578 Million in last FY 2019-20 especially during COVID-19 Pandemic," he said.

The NTC, during COVID-19 Pandemic, also provided the Data Hosting platform and Video Conference System to the federal government for hosting of their entire data and for conducting Prime Minister Office, Cabinet, Economic Coordination Committee and National Command and Operation Centre meetings in a safe and secure environment.

Now, Viqar Rashid said, the NTC was being recognized as an efficient, modern, disciplined and forward looking entity in the public and private telecom sector.

"The NTC in the recent years has made significant achievements, record growth of Exchanges all over the Pakistan @ 240%, record expansion of exchanges to new Cities and Sites @ 50%, record completion of ADP Projects @ 100% during FY 2016- 17 & 2019-20, Broadband Subscribers Growth @ 115% and conversion of 82% of old TDM exchanges to latest state of the art IP based Next Generation Network (NGN) exchanges".

The NTC MD said the corporation had established a state of the art cloud based Tier III ISO- 27001 certified National Data Centre (NDC) in a record time of five months in 2016.

"NTC has also established a state of the art Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) for NDC on 31st December 2020 without any burden on National exchequer by utilizing profit earned from NDC and has set a unique example in the Public Sector. All government websites/applications/mobile applications including those of NCOC/COVID-19 are hosted in NTC NDC", he informed.

He further said that the NTC had also recently restored the online booking and reservation system of Pakistan Railways (PR), which was completely collapsed on January 25, in less than 24 hours.

The NTC is a government owned corporation established to provide secure and reliable telecom and ICT services to the federal and provincial government departments, armed forces and other institutions.