State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan arranged another bloggers meet-up last Wednesday, this time on their CSR initiative ‘Karu Mumkin’. The aim of the event was to experience the idea with Telenor Pakistan’s Marketing and Communication team.

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Developers, here’s your chance to EARN a million rupees. Nokia’s 2010 Calling All Innovators contest has a special prize for developers who submit locally relevant applications (in Urdu or English) and content for use on Nokia devices by consumers living in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the 11 countries where Nokia is offering the award for local content/apps.

1. The best entry by a developer based in Pakistan will receive a special prize of 1,000,000/- PKR in cash.
2. Additionally, two runners-up will get 500,000/- PKR in cash and 300,000/- PKR in cash respectively.
3. This is an additional incentive – you could still be a global winner in one of the four categories!

Click below to read more about what you need to do for a chance to win the special prize in Pakistan.

I thought the term ‘Sim Jagao’ was an interesting marketing phrase to ask people to start using Warid’s prepaid SIM again. I have noticed a number of such offers from all the mobile operators. Mobile number portability is one of the reason. Today it is easy for a customer to switch service. This ‘churn’ is an issue for the companies. My advice: pay attention to customer service and customers are more likely to stay with you.

This offer is for Warid prepaid customers who have not used their SIMS Since January 01, 2010. All such customers upon reactivating their SIMS will immediately get Rs.30 in their accounts as free activation balance. And not only this, they can also get free balance equal to 50% of their first recharge for three months. Another exciting feature is that the customer can enjoy facility of two numbers in their F&F list, one of Warid and one of any other network with the charges as low as Rs. 1 + Tax/min. This offer is valid till 15th June 2010.

Mobilink Infinity has announced that they will no longer offer 256Kbps package. It means that you have to use the upgraded package and pay more. It is great for those who were looking to upgrade but not good for those who are not interested in paying more. The official announcement is below. Somehow the message is not very clear and some people may be surprised to see the extra charge after a couple of months. This is related to our rants about clear messages and billing issues.

We are excited to inform that your 256Kbps Mobilink Infinity Wi MAX account has been upgraded to 512Kbps under a special promotion!!

The Data allowance will be the same as of your 256Kbps package, but with double the speed and performance. You can experience blazing fast browsing, downloads and streaming with this upgrade and enjoy it at *Absolutely No Additional Cost for the Next Two Months*.

This promotion will give you a free speed upgrade for initial two months however, you will have to pay the 512Kbps package monthly charges according to the tariff from the third month onwards.

Here are the tariff details.

Mobilink’s prepaid brand Jazz has come up with a new tag line. Earlier which was ‘No Samjhta‘ now is  ‘Apna Hai‘. The picture below taken from their website shows this.

So far it is just the change in the tag line, lets wait and see if Jazz comes up with more new things.

Telenor Pakistan has launched the ‘Karo Mumkin’ campaign with the aim to position itself as a leader in innovation, and provide the people of Pakistan with a platform for inspiration and realization of possibilities. The campaign is designed to showcase the vision of Telenor Pakistan which seeks to explore new business opportunities in telecommunications, financial services and media. The occasion also marks Telenor Pakistan’s 5th anniversary.

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Here are the results from our most recent poll on billing errors. This matches the results from PTA survey and shows that billing errors are common and a source of problem for consumers. After service quality issues, this is probably the worst that a consumer faces.

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Mobilink Jazz has come up with another limited time reactivation offer. This time for those who have not used your Jazz connection since the 10th of February 2010.

In this offer after putting the Jazz SIM back and sending an SMS to 550, customer gets 50 free minutes. Everyone who has received the 50 free minutes can also get 300 more free minutes by recharging in each of the next three months.

Customers who have lost their SIMs can get new SIMs free of cost from their nearest Mobilink franchise or CC centers. Other service mechanics of the offer can be found here.

Mobile devices are increasingly subject to many of the threats that plague personal computers. Now a leading security researcher has presented a new way to detect malware on mobile devices. According to this article, the new approach  can catch even unknown threats and can protect a device without draining its battery or taking up too much processing power.

Researchers have begun to identify ways to protect devices from malicious software. But traditional ways of protecting desktops against threats don’t translate well to smart phones, says Markus Jakobsson, a principal scientist at Xerox PARC and the person behind the new malware detection technology. Read full story »

• How much is your average expense on mobile phone? http://bit.ly/dwSG0U #
• http://telecompk.net/2010/03/12/2010-begins-with-subscriber-drops-95-4-million/ http://bit.ly/aX2jjz #
• 2010 Begins With Subscriber Drops – 95.4 Million: PTA yesterday released the subscriber… http://goo.gl/fb/JlOg #
• Warid subscriber base goes down by 14% in January, 2010. #Pakistan #
• How long have you been on a same mobile connection? http://bit.ly/btuQP9 #
• Have you experienced billing errors from telecom service provider? Poll will be closing soon, if you haven’t got a… http://bit.ly/90mgWs #
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PTA yesterday released the subscriber numbers for January 2010. The year begins with a drop in overall subscriber base to 95.4 Million as compared to 97.6 Million at December end dropping the mobile density to 58.20%.

The operator suffering the most loss was Warid, losings 2.6 Million subscriber and making its market share 16.97% which was 19.4% in December 2009. Tough time for the new CEO.

All other operators showed some growth with Mobilink still leading the market and Telenor following it. As a result of drops in Warid, Ufone now ranks at third position.

With Telenor bringing innovations to the mobile banking and Mobilink also planning to penetrate with the same soon, the competition will definitely elevate as the year unfolds.

The Board of Directors of Warid Telecom have appointed Mr. Muneer Farooqui as company’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Mr. Farooqui is a 20 year veteran of telecom industry, who started his professional journey in the telecommunication arena in 1993. In May 2004 at the time of inception of the company, Mr. Farooqui joined Warid Telecom as part of the core team in the capacity of GM Customer Service. In January 2006, Mr. Farooqui was given a challenging task of leading and creating the team and operations for Warid Bangladesh.

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