State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Telenor and Mobilink have started offering in-flight cell phone. These services are roaming with and come with a few conditions. For those who find long flights boring or unproductive this can be a great way to pass time and be productive. But there’s a down side to this. I’m sure you have been noticed what happens moments after when a plane lands? Most people ignore the requests from staff to stay seated and quiet. Instead they whip out their phones and start calling their friends and families.  Usually this gets over quickly as people are in a hurry to get out. Now extend this scenario to a long flight. Imagine a chatty person sitting close to you talking for hours during your flight. I tell you, it can be an absolute nightmare!

Here’s a bit of description from the companies about their service:

Mobilink
Partnering with Air France and Emirates through our partner networks OnAir and AeroMobile, Mobilink offers GSM network onboard aircraft; providing not only voice calls and text messages but also data over GPRS. Currently, this service is being provided on one Emirates and one Air France aircraft with plans to roll out across fleets and other airlines in future.

Telenor
Telenor Pakistan proudly launches In-flight mobile phone services onboard International flights collaborating with AeroMobile exclusively on Emirates Airline.

In the US this stirred up plenty of noise — Congress even considered passing a law to ban voice calls on the plane. Then FAA clarified that it was not going to allow cell phones aboard the planes in near future. It is clear that airlines want it and the phone companies want it too. However some powerful consumer groups (read politicians) loathe the idea of a noisy flight. It is the ultimate conflict between businesses and those who don’t like technology intrusion in every aspect of life.

In Pakistan it is less of an issue. People may not even think of it as an issue at this point. But it will be interesting to see the proliferation of cell phone use in Asia and Europe and how people react to it.

Over the past 2 years, TelecomPk.Net has offered many reviews and commentary about PTCL. This post gives a summary of the stories written about PTCL with a time line view. A quick look shows that the telecom consumers of Pakistan have been engaged in various forms of struggle with the privatised face of PTCL. The way PTCL handled the most recent rate increase of local calls (from 0.4 Rs per minute to 1 Rs per min) is indicative of its attitude towards consumers. I wish that I could PTCL the benefit of doubt but its too late for that.

Perhaps it is time to re-write the PTCL mission statement to omit customer satisfaction.

To be the leading Information and Communication Technology Service Provider in the region by achieving customer satisfaction and maximizing shareholders’ value.

In case you missed the past stroies, here is a list of the highlights. (All PTCL posts can be found here)

2006 - Broadband Tarrifs: PTA vs PTCL in court
- Battle of Bandwidth Tarrifs
- Ptcl vs PTA

2007 - ISPs vs PTCL, Profit Falls, Service Issues, Lower DSL Rates, Pakistan Package Forced On Consumers
* Pakistan ISPs Against Ptcl
* PTCL Net down by 25%
* Performance Review
* Lower Broadband Rates from Ptcl
* Service Issues Continue
* Pakistan Package Controversy

2008 - PTA reprimands PTCL, Local call rates changed quietly, Pakistan package modified
+ PTA issues directive against PTCL after public uproar
+ Ptcl Packages rips off consumers

Throughout my recent stay in Malaysia, I tried to find GSM towers but did not find one and for me it was very strange. Finally I solved the mystery. In cities like Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, Petaling jaya etc, communication equipment was placed on all the high rise buildings and that is why it was not visible. However, between cities and in small towns, authorities have placed pre-fabricated towers made of synthetic fiber or plastic like material and good thing is that these communication towers look like trees and thus become invisible among other trees and plantation. I suppose, it is an eminent effort to keep landscape neat and to preserve the environment while deploying technology.

The tariff table below is taken from the annual telecommunications report by PTA. Well, PTCL has already made this out-of-date with their change in lcoal call duration, down from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Any other corrections needed here?

Reality Mining is a process which mines various machine-sensed data which could be used predict human behavior. In case of cell phones, it has been used to provide a uniquely rich record of people’s locations, actions, social behavior, and even social roles. The research at MIT is sponsored by Nokia.

This is one of those stories which may seem to be ’so far out there’ but it has caused many to raise concerns. See the views from Nicholas Carr’s RoughType blog on reality mining.  Do you know for sure that your call data is secure? My concern is that for a variety of reasons, data from emerging telecom markets is susceptible to abuse and reality mining presents one of ways to make use of this data. The privacy laws in Pakistan and other developing countries are so weak (if there are any) that its only a matter of time before a problem is reported.

Here’s more via Business Week:

Nathan Eagle, a research scientist at the MIT Design Laboratory, is currently working with a database that holds an entire month’s worth calling data for a whole European country, though he won’t say which one. Scrubbed of all information that might be used to identify people, the data set contains information on 250 million phones and some 12 billion phone calls.

Wireless companies could use the information to help keep customers from switching to a rival—a strategic must in a region where most of the population already has a cell phone and “new” customers are scarce. Eagle mines the data for a range of information, such as identifying so-called influencers, who use their phone the most. Not only are these subscribers valuable because they use their phone a lot, but they’re also more likely to influence other people’s service and product purchases—and to take customers with them when they switch. “If someone who makes a lot of calls walks away, there’s a higher potential that they’ll take more people along with them,” Eagle says.

Read more »

Interesting to see the two rivals advertising side-by-side.

Can you tell where is this? Easy enough as there is a hint in the picture.: photo courtsey of Lahore Metro Blogs. Read full story here to see what happens when sun goes down.

A number of competing services are available for providing information and answers to questions on a mobile phone (Telenor Ask in Pakistan, Google’s sms and voice, Microsoft TellMe). ChaCha enters this crowded market with a free, human powered offering. I wonder if the premium service from Telenor Ask is a hit with users in Pakistan?

ChaCha is avaialble in US via SMS (242242) and Voice (800-2chacha). An excerpt from Mossberg’s review:

The service works by routing your questions to one of 10,000 hired “guides” — students, stay-at-home parents, retirees and others — who look up the questions on the Web and reply. They get paid 20 cents per answer.

Naturally, these guides vary as to their speed and accuracy. If you don’t like the answers they give you, or you want related information, you can call back or reply to the text message with a follow-up question. For instance, after learning which pitcher had won for Boston, I asked who lost the game for New York. I was quickly informed it was Phil Hughes.

Overall, I liked ChaCha. In most cases, I received fast, accurate, useful answers. But it has two weaknesses. One is that the low-paid, part-time guides can provide inconsistent service. When I asked for the best Mexican restaurant in D.C., for example, ChaCha came up with a choice that few locals would cite.

The other is that, unlike many other cellphone information services, ChaCha doesn’t automatically know your location. So, unless you include a location in your query, it’s clueless about questions such as “Where’s the nearest drugstore?”

The draft of the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008 states the rights of consumers, among other items. Many industry watchdogs have observed instances where these rights are in violation (for instance, see the warning issued to PTCL). What are the consequences for telecommunication companies if they don’t comply with these regulations?

Are the consequences so minor that telecom companies can shrug it off and keep doing the same thing? It needs to be significant enough that it provide motivation for compliance for telecom companies.

There’s one thing PTA can improve easily and it will make a big difference. The Consumer Alerts page on PTA web site is not good enough. It does not have archives of past alerts, is maintained on adhoc basis, is not user friendly and is probably not easy to find. If that was not enough the url keeps changing! It was www.pta.gov.pk/calerts.htm a while ago and now it is www.pta.gov.pk/Ref.htm.

Please make it easy to access the alerts from your home page, make it a part of your content management system and ask PTCL to provide a link to these alerts from their website.

Excerpt Of Consumer Rights From the Proposed Consumer Protection Regulation

• to have clear and easy-to-understand descriptions of the services for which they are paying.
• to know exact costs for all services prior to purchase, clearly expressed in local currency, without the confusion of moving, scrolling or otherwise difficult-to-read text;
• to know in advance of any price changes, associated terms including service contracts and the governing provisions of licensed telecommunication services;

As I have written before the consumer protection regulation is a good start but we need to see it implemented soon. And while we are on the topic, can you fix the 0800-55055 number for complaints?

This is bad news for Pakistanis abroad: they will pay considerably more for calling Pakistan starting May 1. See the news item from Dawn. It seems to me that we are regressing in terms of policy making. Who benefits from this? PTA and long distance operators. What about consumers? Well, a lot of consumers and industry experts are upset and are taking various actions such as expressing their concerns through various offline and online channels (see this petition). One thing is certain: the grey telephony market will flourish because of this. Expect more noise around this in the coming days. I am not looking forward to my next bill for international calls!

Salman Ansari (former CEO of Paktel) has posted interesting predictions at various online forums. Here’s an excerpt:

Quality of calls of inbound calls specially from the US will become terrible (cellular terminations) as most inbound terminations will come in via low cost grey market – biggest culprits will be the biggest carriers (AT&T, Bell Canada, etc).

Wasim Baig summarized his views about this change at TGP:

Pros:
1. LDIs get a higher rate, higher margin
2. APC contribution increases
3. Origination increases
4. Balance of trade in PK’s favor

Cons:
1. Grey market increases
2. LDI may increase origination rates as well
3. Yet more regulation! PTA stays relevant to pricing ..
4. Market pricing takes a back seat

Here’s more from Dawn article.

“The PTA, in fact, has addressed the demand of local operators, who have been pleading for increase in such rates, as it would not affect the local consumers of the facility,” said the source. “But it would naturally increase the cost of calling to Pakistan from outside”.

Read more »

Consumers in Pakistan are faced with a variety of challenges with few avenues to resolve their issues. For telecom customers PTA is the regulatory body responsible for consumer protection. PTA has been working to step up its efforts and it has introduced a consumer rights ordinance.

There is another channel as well which is less well known. This is the Punjab Consumer Protection Council (PCPC), based in Lahore. A recent article on Consumer rights trends from the director of PCPC was published here. This post introduces readers to the diligent work of Punjab Consumer Protection Council in more detail.

PCPC has been working proactively to gather and analyze data about consumer issues and to take concrete steps to resolve them. Here are a few excerpts from the work of PCPC (reproduced by permission) which highlights various problems and issues with telecom industry. For further information or to file a complaint please contact PCPC Headquarters Office, 135-J Model Town, Lahore, Ph # 042-5857927, 5855471.

Charges usually unknown to consumers

• Paktel to Paktel calls are charged on per second basis.

• Warid to Warid calls are charged on 30 sec duration.

• ^Telenor to Telenor airtime charges for 2nd min onwards Rs. 1.67 per min, Telenor to other networks 2nd min onwards Rs. 2.82 per min (including 15% GST).

• Off-peak Time: Ufone & Warid 10 pm to 7 am, Paktel 10pm to 7am.

• 10% Advance Tax is deducted from the purchase value upon Card Activation on all Operators with the exception of Warid Telecom.

A few other Issues

• No Customer Charter
• No Standard Contract
• Falling QoS

This pie chart illustrates the common service quality issues faced by consumer of telecom. This chart is based on a questionnaire-based survey conducted by PCPC itself containing the sample size equal to 100 telecom users relating to different segments of the society.

The Djuice.Pk blog is no more. Telenor asserted its rights to the .pk domain name associated with their brand and took it over from PKNIC, the registrar for .pk domains.

Some of you may have seen the mobile and entertainment oriented blog Djuice.Pk. When I first came across it the first thing which crossed my mind was - where is Telenor? At that time, Telenor’s official Djuice site was at Djuice.com.pk. Recently it was reported at TGP that Telenor filed a case against Imtiaz Shafiq of Pakpoint Network who had registered the Djuice.pk domain . The Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center issued its decision against Pakpoint (see full document). This is one of the high profile domain name dispute.

Domain name conflicts has always been full of controversy. In this case Telenor had a valid case. However the way this case was handled was debated at Telecom Grid Pakistan with many good points from each side. I hope there is a lesson learned here that companies need to be diligent about their brand.

Location based blogging site SpotJots won the prize for NavTeq global LBS challenge 2008. The key take aways here are that  location based applications are quickly gaining ground and this is the future direction of social networking.

First launched in 2003, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is focused on driving the development and visibility of innovative navigation solutions for wireless devices. The application had to work on a Nokia N95 device.

In my opinion this is an extreme form of blogging - social blogging with latitude as spotjots calls it. For some neighborhoods it can be very relevant and the imagery and map resolution can be captivating. I found it a bit too much to see the map rectange with every post. What would be better is to have a geocode associated with each post (and perhaps tags with relevant words which come automatically as you hover over).  Overall it will be best if this could be integrated with one of mainstream news and information site.