Instead of providing goods & services to the common citizens at competitive prices efficiently, the public enterprises turned into avenues for loot and plunder, inefficient provision of services and production of shoddy goods. It was a common knowledge that getting a telephone connection in Pakistan required years not months and that too with the help of sifarish and exchange of bribes.
No wonder the country was able to install less than 3 million telephones in the entire 50 years of its history while under a deregulated and private sector driven environment an additional 6 to 7 million mobile phone connections were given to Pakistanis from all walks of life without any favour or discrimination in one year alone i.e. 2004.