Back in Pakistan, three things are mentionable in this thread:

1. Telefun, the infamous 0900 operator, had been fleecing unsuspecting and inadequately aware telephone subscribers to pay Rs 14 per minute rates to hear to their highly advertised and misleading campaigns that often were declared as a scam. The number to call was 090078601. PTA received numerous complaints against Telefun but did not act meaningfully.

2. Mobilink partnered with Telefun and started offering same services to its users via the number 78601 only to replace with its full fledged voice portal called ‘555′ (recently launched). The portal is still a portal and not a search platform . Till the people in Pakistan discover that voice search portals are also possible, they will be hearing low-bit-rate quality songs, old jokes and metoo recipes while burning their balances.

3. There is at least one company-in-the-making that plans to offer human assisted internet search off the phone as a high value added service probably on a 0900 number with queries knowing no bounds and answers being provided right way on the phone or mailed/smsed/IMed back to the questioner. The project has been codenamed ‘info-hay’ (hay = available in Urdu).