State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Flare Magazine, Islamabad based technology magazine, is known to copy and paste articles from the cyberspace. Now it has also started stealing content and headlines from blogs such as this one and others. If you look at the stories in Flare you will find that most (if not all) of them do not cite any references. Well, there are no authors as well. This is not limited to Flare, other news publishers seem to be doing the same. This shows the sad state of affairs for old media in Pakistan. The quality of reporting has been steadily going down but it has reached a new low with the stealing of content. If left unchekced, this will lead the next generation to think that it is ok to plagiarize and sell.

I am surprised that the telecommunication companies who place their ads in Flare Magazine are either unaware or oblivious of this parctice of old media copying stories from new media. I hope that they have some standards for the publications where their name appears!

To illustrate, see these stories from Flare’s May 15 – June 15 edition (25MB pdf).

1. Pakistan’s Telecom Industry: Is the honeymoon over? Originally published at Pakistaniat.com
Here’s the copy as it appears in Flare.

 2. Here are 2 posts from TelecomPk.net: Calls to Pakistan Made Expensive and Is Pakistan ready for 3G?

 I hope that there will be enough awareness and concern from the public to discourage this practice and get journalism back on track.

Thanks to Saleem Khan for informing me about this.

Do you know if your SIM is really registered in your name? What happens if your SIM is not registered at all? Till recently it was not a big deal but now your SIM may be blocked. PTA has been making announcements about SIM data verification for a while (see this story). PTA has also sent tough signals by raiding and closing some franchises which did not follow the guidelines for registration. But this time the burden is directly on consumers: no matter who sold you the SIM, if it is not registered properly then it is subject to service blocking. See the warning notice from PTA.

As one can imagine this is a major problem for consumers. According to some estimates 7 million SIMs could be impacted. Some blocking has already started though I am not sure of the total number (1.4 million according to a source). It is a subject of debate on who is responsible for this mess but for sure consumers have to suffer and pay the price. This is what happens when government policies are not implemented consistently.

According to this post from MobilePakistan, subscribers can send a blank sms to 667 to get information about the registration status of their SIM. In case there’s an issue “you have to take the SIM along with a photostat copy of your National Identity Card to your mobile phone company’s Authorised Office and get the SIM ownership transferred in your name.”

Local media has given July 1st as the new effective date of this blocking. I think more time should be given to the public to clean up the mess created by the govt agencies. And there should be better communication and tools to help the consumers. There should be an online tool to tell you if the SIM is unregistered or not. This can help the expat Pakistanis who often buy a SIM when they are visiting home and then go back abroad.

After all is said and done this could help (to some extent) with a few things such as pranks, hackers and other abuse. At least people will realize that there are some rules to be followed – even in today’s Pakistan.

Since last month Ufone has started BlackBery service in Pakistan (see my previous post on this topic). Ufone had been working on it for a while and it must be a big achievement for them to make this milestone. So Mobilink is not the only one and Ufone rates are a tad better (monthly rates are Rs. 900 for individuals and Rs. 1350-1500 for business). What is Telenor waiting for?

BlackBerry is particularly valuable for mobile companies as it brings high arpu business accounts which are sticky … it is called Crackberry for a reason. I can’t tell you how many people I see walking around in office hallways with a BlackBerry in their hand. Yeah, it looks funny when you see others but seems perfectly fine when you are doing it!

After a relative period of calm, PTA has launched a new campaign against illegal telephony. With the help of technology by Naurus, PTA busted an operation at Karachi. Full details are at this news release By PTA. See grey telephony and VOIP coverage from the past at TelecomPk.net and a recent discussion on this topic at TGP.

As the world’s largest market, there has been a huge interset by the whole world in China’s 3G plans. Finally there is official word on China’s 3G roll out. At TelecomPk.net we have been wondering about 3G in Pakistan for some time and it is interesting to learn from the Chinese 3G roll out. For one the Chinese telecom has been shrouded in mystery for years. Now restructuring plans have been announced which will cause many ripples in the Chinese industry and will have implications for global telecom industry.

We share two perspectives here. One from WSJ story Long-Awaited Plan Feeds Competition, Fuels Wireless Revamp and another from blogger Brough Turner China’s 3G license delay is a smoke screen. Brough who has travelled to China frequently, says that 3G licenses are a formality and 3G is happening in China without licenses. Brough believes that “As more and better TD-SCDMA handsets get deployed, we should see some really interesting innovation coming out of China — innovation that will be applicable to any 3G technology, anywhere in the world.”

Some excerpts from the news story:

After the restructuring, the statement said, the government will issue licenses for advanced, “third-generation,” wireless services that enable high-speed functions such as video downloads. China is one of the last major telecommunications markets to adopt such 3G technology. Global telecom-equipment providers such as Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent SA, and Huawei Technologies Co. have been waiting years for China to begin building 3G networks.

The new structure has been determined entirely by the government, which owns all of their parent companies, without any say from outside shareholders. While Saturday’s statement said the government only “encouraged” companies to follow the plan, it is clear that companies have begun to implement it.

China Mobile Communications Corp., parent of China Mobile, will take over China Tietong Telecommunications Corp., the smallest of three fixed-line operators. China Mobile stock is down for now though it has been turbulent this year.

Questions remain about how the industry changes will play out — not least about how various 3G technologies will be deployed. Industry executives and analysts expect each of the three new carriers to use a different type of 3G technology, including two international standards and one that was developed in China.

The government has been especially eager to promote the domestic 3G standard, called TD-SCDMA, as part of a broader push to help wean China off higher-cost foreign technologies. TD-SCDMA has undergone the widest testing in China. But some analysts have said problems with the technology — which hasn’t been used outside China — have caused the government to delay the rollout of commercial 3G services.

Saturday’s statement alluded to the importance placed on TD-SCDMA, saying one of the industry restructuring’s main goals is to foster “indigenous innovation.”

It remains unclear how the other two 3G technologies, WCDMA and CDMA2000, will be employed — a question for foreign companies that stand to earn more from their use. China Mobile, the strongest financially of existing operators, has been handling the bulk of the TD-SCDMA tests, and is expected to keep using the technology as licenses for commercial service are issued.

Salman Munir writes at Green & White about his unexpected high bill from Wateen. The reason? the bill included line rent which should have been zero according to Wateen’s campaign. For background see posts about Wateen’s tarrifs and product launch.

I very clearly remember their sales representative (wateen’s, not franchise) hammering it on my head that, I would only be charged Rs. 1350/- Per Month for a 512KB /10GB cap package. And for that I was required to give 11 months post-dated cheques and first month in advance with equipment cost. Now, if you look at exhibit A, they have managed to bring out Rs. 891.50 worth of charges, i’m liable to pay.

Its the 3rd billing month and this is the first bill i’m receiving. What’s interesting to note is the line rent for telephone service, their IVR hold music also very clearly announces “telephony services for ZERO line rent!”

I was not yet satisfied with their falsified claims by Wateen’s support staff about why they are charging me Rs. 1350 and every billboard out their announcing that I should be paying Rs. 799/- for the same. Now, they have sent me unjustified bill.

What you guys think about Wateen’s policies? Do we, consumer have any say in this? What we, as consumers can do about it?

I believe these kind of hardware+software mashups to be very relevant to next generation of location based services and telecom industry. Here’s a video from 2008 O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference, the meeting place for upcoming location based services. This talks about a set of open-source hardware modules which can be connected together and programmed to interact as desired – for example to create a proximity-based to-do list. There is more information available at conference proceedings page.

This story is based on work from the impressive research team at LIRNEAsia. I am sharing two interesting results from the 39-page presentation which higlight the benefits (increaes in earnings, efficiencies, savings) for Pakistani telecom users, relative to other Asian countries. This work serves as another good answer to the questions raised about the link between rise of SIMs in Pakistan and benefits to the nation. Overall I think we had a decent first phase of telecom growth but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

There are downsides to this rapid growth as well but mostly these are either intangible or hard to measure as they mostly relate to society and ethics. Perhpas social scientists will publish some results on these aspects too.

Note: This work was presented at the International Conference on Information, Communication and New Media & the First Annual Convention of the Information and Communication Association of Taiwan.

We have often talked about the rapid increase in mobile teledensity in Pakistan. It may take years to get accurate measurements on the impact of this change but one thing is certain: getting phones to the masses has radically changed the way Pakistanis work and play. Here’s a snapshot which depicts street reality, published first in DAWN and then at All Things Pakistan.

Eager consumers in Pakistan have been waiting for months to get specific details about the pricing and availability of IPTV by PTCL. No official word yet but launch date has been moved several times. Various online forums have been reported a limited trial going on in select cities and PTCL has started advertising IPTV on their website and broadband portals. This teaser website tells you about the “mouth-watering features” but all the links there are non-functional.

I have been using IPTV service by Verizon at my home for a while and I have come to like it. Of course many of the interesting features come with additional price tags. The performance and usability may not be that great in the beginning. As we have talked here in the past triple play is a powerful opportunity for PTCL to stabilize its position — only if it executes well.

There are other practical considerations as well. At telecom grid pakistan, there was a question about how lack of electricity will impact the IPTV service. Well, if you are into personal video recorders, you better arrange for the uninterrupted power supply as well.

Sending money back home is big business and Obopay wants a slice of it. From Pakistan Amaana has similar goals and it will be interesting to see once they are out of beta. Last I read was its CEO’s interview at Green & White. Another emerging player, Inov8 also claims to offer this service as part of its mobile solutions but I’ve yet to see details. I think it will take a long and focused effort to slog through the contracts and regulatory struggle. It will be a while before a winner emerges. Lets see if Obopay can convince Indian expats to use its service. From GigaOm:

Much like Western Union is the money transfer agent of choice in the real world, and PayPal is online, Obopay wants to be the way to send money for mobile. To do this it will have to win out over PayPal’s own mobile division, plus a myriad of startups such as KushCash and TextPayMe.com.

Obopay is counting on the experience of people like CFO Dave Johnson, a former CFO at PayPal and Banc of America Securities, because its global money transfer plans require it to handle banking relationships in multiple countries (right now it’s only in the U.S. and India).

It had to get a whopping 41 licenses in order to become a registered money transfer agent in the U.S. The result is that Obopay allows users to store and move money on their Obopay account accessed through mobiles or the web, and also to transfer money from their bank accounts using their phone to that of another person — even if that person doesn’t have Obopay.

The ability to transfer money regardless of a person’s carrier or bank is a compelling proposition. Realini hopes allowing non-Obopay members to receive money will help the company grow over the long term. The money transfer play here is much broader than the “split the check” kinds of social payments offered by KushCash and TextMyBill. The amount of money transfered between countries is in the billions, so if Obopay can expand quickly on an international scale, it could very well achieve what it’s trying to accomplish.

There was plenty of recent discussion about Zong launch and what will it mean for mobile companies in Pakistan. Let’s start with the net increase to Zong’s subscribers in April 2008. According to recently released numbers by PTA, Zong added 1,004,298 subscribers in April. and finished up with 3.15M total. Pretty good but certainly they have a long way to go. By the way that report about 12M users for Zong in a month was obviously incorrect. Here are the total subscriber numbers (excluding Instaphone) at the end of April 2008:

31,935,624 Mobilink
17,539,457 Ufone
17,323,169 Telenor
14,760,593 Warid
3,146,763 Zong