Archive for June 2nd, 2008

Directory Service 1217, Traffic Police 1915

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 2, 2008 under Consumer Rights, Government Regulations, Networks, PTCL, Pakistan, Telecom News, Telecommunications

Public announcement about changes to a few important numbers. The first one, directory number change from 17 to 1217, is controversial. What used to be a free call is a local call now. Combined with all the other rates going up at PTCL, the timing of this is not good. Based on prior comments here and at other forums, public sentiment is not in favor of this change. Here’s a bit of information, taken from a PTCL press release:

The ‘14’, ‘17’ and ‘18’ service numbers have now all been changed to ‘1214’, ‘1217’ and ‘1218’ respectively.

As everywhere else in the world the new and improved directory inquiry service of PTCL will be charged as a local call from 1st June 2008. PTCL has also employed hundreds of call center agents to accommodate customer queries efficiently and promptly.

In its efforts to provide callers updated information, PTCL recently launched the 0800-01217 toll-free number so that customers could update their information in the PTCL database free of cost.

Second item is about conversion of traffic police number from 915 to 1915. In the past this was a local number available in Karachi and Islamabad. PTA reviewed the policy and decided to increase the numbering capacity and to make it a standard short code without the need of dialing an area code. It should now be available in Lahore as well. Both old & new codes shall run in parallel for a period of six months. After December of 08 only 1915 will work.

Mobile Banking Policy Directive From IT Ministry

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 2, 2008 under Government Regulations, M-Commerce, Mobile Companies, Telecommunications, Value Added Services

I heard about this at TGP and followed a chain of obscure links to get to the pdf version of the Mobile Banking (including Money Transfers and Remittances) policy directive issued by Mr. Baqai, member (telecom). The five page document defines the main concepts and lays down the ground rules for technical implementation of banking applications on mobile devices (see a sample excerpt below). The policy directive seems to be a formality as it does not contain enough details. How does this change things for all the companies who already are active in mobile banking?