State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

The race of teleco adverts has taken a new turn now. We have the on-going trend of taunting at each other in adverts but now its about acquiring over the brand ambassadors.

Ali Zafar, the renowned brand ambassador of Telenor Talkshawk has left all with a shock with his entry in the Mobilink Jazz latest promotion commercial. Talkshock!

The latest promotion is , if you haven’t used your Jazz Sim from May 20th, simply switch it on, and recharge. You will get instant Rs.30 plus 100 percent free balance on your first recharge.

The best part of the commercial is “Aaj hi join kia hai, dusari company se aye hain”

Braintel has completed a full circle regarding its fight with PTA. A few weeks ago Braintel sent an email to its customers with an attachment which showed that the services have been restored based on a decision by the High Court. That is good news for expat Pakistanis. However the letter also asked customers to make changes to their account setting.  I am sharing the process of getting your Braintel line working again:

1. On the device settings, you need to change UserID and AuthID so that 210, the first three digits of the ID are changed to 1001 (four digits). That is, 210-####  changes to 1001-####.
2. Call customer service (2100786 from braintel. 0092-42-2100786 or 0044-1785-800786 otherwise) and make sure that your number is provisioned properly. It may take a while for the change to become effective.
3. Use the call back procedure explained here.

For those who use Linksys PAP2 device, see the setting changes in the screenshot below.

Rates at the time of this post are reasonable - probably the main reason why tens of thousands of customers put up with the service instability and changes!

• Lahore Local: Rs 0.90+Taxes
• Fixed Line and WLL Nation Wide: Rs 2.0+Taxes
• Local and Nation Wide mobile network: Rs 2.75+Taxes

Wi-Tribe has now officially launched its Wi-MAX services in Pakistan. The official launch press release is as follows.

Launches largest wireless broadband Internet service in Pakistan

Doha, June 30, 2009: wi-tribe, a Qtel Group company, today announced the official launch of its wireless broadband service in Pakistan, its largest market to date. The launch phase will include the cities of Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, and Rawalpindi.

“Today, a new milestone is achieved in the evolution of wi-tribe and the realization of our vision to become one of the top 20 telecom players by 2020,” said Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Thani, Chairman of The Qtel Group. “Following our launch in Jordan, Pakistan marks a major stepping stone towards our expansion strategy and our intention to leverage the scale and strengths of The Qtel Group in order to deliver the latest technologies to our customers and continue to enhance services across our operations,” added Sheikh Abdullah.”

Dr. Nasser Marafih, CEO of The Qtel Group and Chairman of wi-tribe, commented: “Consumer broadband is at the heart of the Qtel Group strategy and a major pillar of growth. The launch of wi-tribe in Pakistan is a very important moment for all of us at The Qtel Group as it reflects a major stepping stone towards our commitment to bring broadband wireless access to more people, to connect individuals and businesses more easily and to improve access to the internet in all new and emerging markets.

“Broadband penetration levels in new emerging markets are currently very low compared to markets in the region. However, consumer demand for wireless services is growing at a fast pace. So we will continue to focus on this area in the future as we see good business opportunity and significant growth potential,” added Dr. Nasser.

Shaikh Abdulrahman Ali Al Turki, Chairman and CEO of A.A.Turki Group A.A. Turki Group of companies (ATCO), commended on the growth and success achieved by the wi-tribe group stating, “At ATCO we are extremely pleased with wi-tribe’s developments since its establishment in 2007. The addition of Pakistan to our tribe is proof of our firm commitment to bridge the digital divide and bring to emerging markets the best in connectivity and ease of access. It is about time these markets got excellent quality service.”

“wi-tribe uses WiMAX technology to provide customers with the advantage of broadband internet access wirelessly, giving them the option of accessing the internet whenever and wherever they choose within the network area,” commented Sami Hinedi, CEO, wi-tribe Group. “We strongly believe in improving the lifestyle of our customers by understanding their needs and offering them the best personalized customer experience. We want to provide solutions that are simple, easy and valued by individuals, businesses and the Government,” he added.

wi-tribe is a focused and dedicated consumer wireless broadband provider and will offer instant connectivity with applications tailor-made and simplified to accommodate the needs of every customer. The wi-tribe service will deliver broadband internet access through the ‘plug in and play’ option offering speeds of 256Kbps, 512 Mbps, and 1 Mbps. The process of becoming a wi-triber is extremely simple and beneficial. The wi-tribe service uses an efficient and highly effective plug and play modem which provides online access on the go. Internet users in Pakistan will experience the best in consumer wireless broadband service and wi-tribe’s unique customer care experience.

The official website has details for packages that wi-tribe is offering in Pakistan.

With this launch the WiMAX competition will definitely boom in Pakistan.

Those who have used the wi-tribe services, do share your experience with us.

[Press release via Zawya.com]

This Economist article, titled Sensors and Sensitivity, talks about the various interesting studies of data collection from mobile phones.

Mobile phones provide new ways to gather information, both manually and automatically, over wide areas.
 

If your mobile phone could talk, it could reveal a great deal. Obviously it would know many of your innermost secrets, being privy to your calls and text messages, and possibly your e-mail and diary, too. It also knows where you have been, how you get to work, where you like to go for lunch, what time you got home, and where you like to go at the weekend. Now imagine being able to aggregate this sort of information from large numbers of phones. It would be possible to determine and analyse how people move around cities, how social groups interact, how quickly traffic is moving and even how diseases might spread. The world’s 4 billion mobile phones could be turned into sensors on a global data-collection network.

They could also be used to gather data in more direct ways. Sensors inside phones, or attached to them, could gather information about temperature, humidity, noise level and so on. More straightforwardly, people can send information from their phones, by voice or text message, to a central repository. This can be a useful way to gather data quickly during a disaster-relief operation, for example, or when tracking the outbreak of a disease. Engineers, biologists, sociologists and aid-workers are now building systems that use handsets to sense, monitor and even predict population movements, environmental hazards and public-health threats.

A good example is InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters), a non-profit group based in California, which promotes the use of mobile phones to improve developing countries’ ability to respond to disasters. Launched with seed money from Google’s philanthropic arm and the Rockefeller Foundation in late 2007, it has just released a suite of open-source software to share, aggregate and analyse data from mobile phones. Its first test-bed is Cambodia, where health-workers can send text messages, containing observations and diagnoses, to a central number.

The sender’s location is determined for each of the messages, which pop up as conversation threads on an interactive map that can be called up on the web. Clicking on this map allows text messages to be sent back to users in the field from the control centre. InSTEDD says this service, called GeoChat, enables “geospatial ground-truthing, as your mobile team works to confirm, refute, or update data”.

Read full story »

Jehan Ara has been talking to some very interesting people. And you know what’s great about the interviews? You can be anywhere in the world but you can hear about  the positive work happening in Pakistan. Just a few years ago it was hard to stay in touch and figure out what everyone else in the small but growing tech space of Pakistan was doing. Now we have the right set of tools technologies and connectivity to spread the word and keep us connected.

Jehan Ara and team have proved that it is possible to inspire, even in difficult times like these. There’s an art to the interviews - finding interesting people, asking the right questions, making them comfortable and then allowing the interviewees to talk about their passion.

Such candid interviews present a picture of progress and accomplishments which is extremely important to share with the world. Sharing information and inspiration can result in unexpected side benefits as well. Moreover, these interviews have also connected people and some have resulted in business inquiries and joint venture opportunities.

In case you have missed some of the recent interviews, here are links to a few of the many:

• Azhar Rizvi - MITEF Pakistan, Tech Angels Network - Post, Interview
• Zafar Khan - Sofizar. Post, Interview
• Dr Arshad Ali - EECS - Post, Interview
• Farzal Dojki -  Post, Video
• Asharaf Kapadia - Post, Interview
• Shahzad Shahid - Post, Video

What motivates you to do all this, I asked Jehan Ara.

I am just so excited by all the innovation and growth that is taking place in this industry and I want to talk about it. If I make my guests comfortable enough so that they share information about themselves, their struggles, their successes, what motivates them, then I have been successful. I strive to ensure that their voices are heard.

Keep up the good work!

From 1st July 2009, PTCL and NTC numbers in Karachi and Lahore will change to 8 digits numbers. Add ‘3′ before PTCL numbers and ‘9′ before NTC numbers for dialing.

Example,
The PTCL number 466-xxxx will become 3466-xxxx and NTC number 912-xxxx becomes 9912-xxxx.

More at Fixed Line Numbers Going 8 Digits.

This is an introductory post on the topic of Telematics and how it could be used in Pakistan. Telematics refers to the convergence of telecommunications and information processing in the context of automobiles. Services which are enabled by telematics include safety and security (get help after a crash, ask for help with a dead battery, stolen car alert), convenience (traffic alerts, find an address, remotely unlock a door) and other (download content to car, book a hotel room). Telematics used to be offered by expensive car makers but it is now becoming mainstream rapidly.

Lets take a look at what components and technologies are involved in building a telematics solution.

• Hardware - TCU (Telematics Control Unit) - a box which is placed in the car and has GPS
• Connectivity for voice (call center) and data (GSM or CDMA for sms and TCP/IP data)
• Software (server-side platform which manages the entire solution)
• Services and applications (e.g. speech recognition, POI data, call center)

Overall building a telematics solution is very much like a systems integration work. From connecting the hardware to data centers, managing the wireless data and voice, providing the information to a specialized call center and coordinating the response with different types of providers (emergency, police, roadside assistance, insurance etc). Protocols are defined to communicate between different components and to handle messages in SMS format or to handle packet data.

Most common scenario of telematics is when a car is in accident. Modern TCUs can sense the crash and send the data automatically to the system, alerting a call center about the crash severity and the location. Emergency help can thus be sent. Other scenario is when a person gets stranded on a road and needs help, then the SOS button in the car is pushed and a call is initiated to the call center from the car. Of course a wireless signal is needed for the TCU to dial out. Similarly a call center can call back the car.

Fleet tracking (commercial vehicles - taxis, buses, company vans, trucks etc) is another big area where the cost of telematics is justified because of business advantages.

In developing countries, services such as stolen vehicle alert and location could be useful. Since a vast majority of the cars do not come with the hardware, retrofitting of cars with TCU/GPS units will be most common. Once there is connectivity and a way to send data over the air, many different solutions can be built. You can have a geo-fence application which can alert you if your car moves out of a certain radius. Parents can track the movement of the car when their kids are driving. Of course the modern cars have many sensor built into the car so one can imagine all kinds of automobile data being sent over the air. Vehicle data can be used for troubleshooting, diagnostics and maintenance alerts.

In Pakistan there are a few companies and groups working on telematics (perhaps as distributors of foreign hardware makers) but the market is not ready for massive adoption - most probably due to hardware cost, complexity of building solutions and the limited number of people who are willing to pay for such service. It usually takes the car makers a few years to plan out a complete telematics solution so we might see something in the next 2-3 years in limited models. At least a good and affrodable telecom and wirless infrastructure is in place in Pakistan to support the telematics services. There is plenty of activity in this area in India.

More info: here’s link from Wipro and a description at HowStuffWorks.

TeleomPk has been providing coverage of Telehealth or mobile health work in Asia. This post is a summary of the various efforts going on but of course, its not comprehensive. It would be great to have a national website where doctors, scientist, technologists, social workers and other stakeholders can discuss, share and publish their work.

Let’s start with research at the Next Generation Intelligent Networks Research Center of FAST University, Islamabad. Their work on Remote Patient Monitoring System with Focus on Antenatal Care (see past post) is funded by the National ICT R&D fund, Government of Pakistan, over the period of 3 years (2008-2010). The primary objective of this project is to develop a reliable, efficient and easily deployable remote patient monitoring system that can play a vital role in providing basic health services to the remote village population of Pakistan at their door step.

There’s more innovative work in this area by other groups as well. In this interview, Jehan Ara talks with a Pakistani researcher Jahanzeb Sherwani (prior coverage here) who has done doctoral level research at CMU about using speech recognition with local languages to collect information regarding rural health care. In this interview he talks about expanding the work out of the labs and to include more local languages. Excerpt from a post by Jehan Ara.

Jahanzeb has been more excited about the HealthLine PhD project that he has been working on with Hands, an NGO. Speech recognition is, he believes, the equalizer, the ultimate enabler. It doesn’t matter if you are illiterate or if you speak a different language.

LIRNEAsia also publishes work on m-health topic quite often. Much of their work looks at running surveys and working with local communities to gather data and to test out the technologies. They also work with Carnegie Mellon university on Bio-surveillance work.

Of course when it comes to developed countries there’s a lot of emphasis on reducing cost and for providing connected services whereby automation and intelligence can make devices and testing smart. Here’s ATT vision for medical remote monitoring (source: Fast Company). A number of other companies are active in this area. There’s also interest in providing monitoring and emergency services for senior citizens.

Lirneasia also publishes work on m-health topic quite often. Much of their work looks at running surveys and working with local communities to gather data and to test out the technologies. They also work with Carnegie Mellon university on Bio-surveillance work.

Please suggest any other sources which you think should be covered. Here’s another report from Africa about health care improvement.

Cell phones may have changed the way people communicate in the developed world, but in developing countries they’re going far beyond simple communication to bring new opportunities to areas that sorely need them. Case in point: FrontlineSMS:Medic, a new initiative to improve health care in poor, rural villages.

Read full story »

Cross post from Basit Ali’s Blog

All Facebook users who also carry a BlackBerry must rejoice and should try out version 1.6.0.17 that is out now and is available to download. Simply go to the existing Facebook application and select to upgrade. If you don’t have the app on your BlackBerry phone already, you can download it from here. I have been using the Facebook app on my BlackBerry for a while now but it always lacked many features and the wap site m.facebook.com was always better. I’ve also been trying some third party tools like shozu and snaptu for Facebook access but none of them have been as simple, comprehensive and convenient as the wap site. This time, the development team has done the job very well and has given a feature boost to the application and now I don’t use the wap site anymore.

The new features include:

• A new and improved home screen that shows status updates.
• You can comment on these statuses
• A new “View Highlights” screen that shows photos posted by users, status updates, wall posts, photo comments, relationship status changes, phone number changes and a bundle of other updates.
• Capability of commenting from the above mentioned “View Highlights” screen.
• An improved Notification page

Photo gallery — View Highlights

• An improved Friend’s list that allows, not only to poke and message friends, but lets you call them, view their profile.
• The user profile screen that lets you view updates from a friend and yes, my favorite, browse and view the albums and photos
• An amazing album and photo gallery? Watching photos from Facebook friends’ albums is a charm on this app. Did I mention that already?
• Photo gallery allows you to browse and scroll through the photos, zoom into the photos and set photos as the BB home screen.

View Profile —– Upload and Tag Photos

All existing features including poke, message, write on wall, invite friends, tag and upload photos etc are also there and are complemented by the new features and they complement the new features too.

The app also allows you to sync your Facebook and Blackberry contacts. You can connect Facebook profiles with existin entries on your Blackberry contacts, you can request phone numbers of Facebook friends and you can also search for people in your Blakcberry contacts on Facebook and add them up.

Following wizard came up on my web-based Facebook when I logged in just after installing the new Facebook app on my Blackberry.

You can watch the usage video posted below to get an idea of the new feature’s working.

Note, I carry a non-wifi Blackberry, so the application looks a bit slow in the video.

Summary
Overall, the application is a hit. I don’t find many drawbacks in the app.

The good:

• View albums: Its smooth, shows album name, preview photo and number of photos in it. Nice side-wise scrolling transitions.
• View photos: Amazing full screen photo viewing with photo title/info and swapping between photos in an album is a charm. Side wise scrolling thumbnails make it look so good.
• View profiles: A new feature with great options like view photos, poke, message and profile activity of the user.
• Great contact sync: Allows you to sync your Facebook contacts with Blackberry contacts and vise-versa.
• Request phone number: You can request a Facebook user’s phone number and can sync it with the phone so that you can use it for calling. I got to talk to a few very old friends just because of this feature.

The Bad

• The earlier Facebook notification system worked great with the Blackberry holster. (Facebook notification rings, you pull out the phone and notification is right on the screen). Things are not that good with this version. Notification system doesn’t work. Doesn’t work at all. But this is a very small glitch and I’m sure things will be fixed in next version.
• Facebook experience on Blackberry is still behind Facbook experience on an iPhone.

As we discussed last year in this post, Zong has confirmed its plans to continue investing and expanding in Pakistan. As background to this, see the total number of sites by companies at 2008 end (source: PTA).

The daily times report (with some obvious errors corrected - it was full of mistakes) states:

China Mobile Pakistan has planned to maximise the coverage capacity of its cellular phone operator-Zong-by increasing its number of cellular sites up to 9,000 across the country with an investment of $500 million by the end of 2009.

According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country had overall 26,300 cellular sites by the end of 2008. Five operators have added 8,966 networking sites in the first half of the current fiscal year 2008-09.

The Chinese company has invested $1.66 billion so far in Pakistan, including $600 million invested in the closing fiscal year 2008-09, which is a handsome contribution to foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecommunication and IT industry.

According to the officials, the company will invest more to increase its number of services and sale centres across the country that would also generate more number of job opportunities.

Interesting research about understanding the background noise of a phone.

Researchers are increasingly using cell phones to better understand users’ behavior and social interactions. The data collected from a phone’s GPS chip or accelerometer, for example, can reveal trends that are relevant to modeling the spread of disease, determining personal health-care needs, improving time management, and even updating social-networks. The approach, known as reality mining, has also been suggested as a way to improve targeted advertising or make cell phones smarter: a device that knows its owner is in a meeting could automatically switch its ringer off, for example.

A group at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH, has created software that uses the microphone on a cell phone to track and interpret a user’s activity. The software, called SoundSense, picks up sounds and tries to classify them into certain categories. In contrast to similar software developed previously, SoundSense can recognize completely unfamiliar sounds, and it also runs entirely on the device. SoundSense automatically classifies sounds as “voice,” “music,” or “ambient noise.” If a sound is repeated often enough or for long enough, SoundSense gives it a high “sound rank” and asks the user to confirm that it is significant and offers the option to label the sound.

Telenor has introduced a new package called Persona targeted for small and medium sized businesses. It seems to be a smart move and the product has good features. However the website needs some improvements.

Below is the main page of Persona which is linked from the home page. The flash design is not appropriate for business users. There is no text based information about the different parts of Persona Karobar unless you click on one of the images. I had to click twice (total three clicks from the home page) before I could get to the packages and pricing info. It should have been a single click.

There are other small things missing such as the page title does not spell out the purpose of the page but just says ‘Telenor’.

Thanks to Anam Khan for the post suggestion and information.