In June 2026, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) released a consultation paper proposing to recognize Corporate SMS as a distinct telecommunications market segment and designate all mobile operators as entities with Significant Market Power (SMP) in this sector. This move aims to strengthen wholesale pricing regulation and is expected to ease the mounting SMS cost pressure on banks and fintech companies.
Banks and financial institutions are the largest users of Corporate SMS, relying heavily on it for OTP verification codes, transaction alerts, account notifications and marketing pushes. Enterprises report that while Corporate SMS shares the underlying network with regular SMS, its wholesale price has been rising continuously. The PTA assesses that OTT alternatives such as WhatsApp Business, email and in-app push notifications cannot fully replace SMS. SMS does not require a smartphone, internet access or app installation, and can reach virtually all mobile users. Many enterprise business systems are deeply integrated with SMS gateways, making the cost of switching to alternative channels prohibitively high.
On the supply side, SMS aggregators and enterprise service providers must sign contracts with operators to complete SMS termination, and each operator has exclusive control over SMS termination for subscribers on its own network. As a result, the PTA has put forward a special determination criterion: even if an operator’s market share is less than 25%, it still constitutes a "termination monopoly" in the Corporate SMS termination business, and all operators will be designated as SMP entities.
The regulator has required operators to submit audited business data for 2023-2025, including the average price of Corporate SMS, revenue from banking SMS and marketing SMS, among other information. Following this consultation, interventions on wholesale pricing and access rules may be introduced to enhance pricing transparency and reduce costs for enterprises.
