Archive for June 27th, 2008

Online UAN Auction By PTA: High Cost, Substandard Website

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 27, 2008 under Business, Government Regulations, Telecommunications

PTA is auctioning UAN numbers. It is good for PTA that they found another lucrative way to charge 160K for a number. See details at this URL for online submission. Regardless of one’s views about universal access number pricing, I was disappointed by the poor usability and overall, low quality of the site - even by PTA standards. The links at the top right don’t work - contact us button tries to sign you out and shows you a 404 error. More concerning is the fact that the site requires you to upload sensitive personal documents (NTN, NIC and bank documents) but the site does not even have SSL.


Development Through Mobiles

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 27, 2008 under Competitive Trends, Consumer Rights, Digital Divide, Economy, Emerging Markets Telecom, Government Regulations, ICT, Infrastructure, M-Commerce

Syed Mohammad Ali writes about development and mobile telecommunication in Pakistan and developing countries, quoting the Base Of Pyramid (BoP) research work by LIRNEAsia. Excerpts from his article at Daily Times:

Numerous studies have pointed towards the positive relationship between phone penetration and national incomes.

But there are also simultaneous concerns that ICT benefits are only being availed by a small segment of populations within the developing world. Here we consider on-ground impacts that a specific communication technology like mobile phones can have on the lives of common people.

Many more poor people are now able to afford phones within the region. They seem to consider it efficient to have phone access, which makes sense, since phones can help even poor people save time and effort by avoiding making physical trips to convey a message or get required information.

On economic benefits and trust on M-commerce:

It seems logical to assume that saving time and effort also translates into economic savings. However, the poor themselves do not generally relate phone access to tangible economic gains yet. While some small scale studies have actually managed to quantify the benefits that a phone can have, in some Indian fisheries and among agricultural workers in Sri Lanka who are using phones to get better prices for their products, researchers point to an apparent disconnect in poor people’s perceptions concerning the economic value of a phone. Perhaps this is so because in most emerging and developing countries, people still prefer physical interactions for their financial dealings. This is an interesting issue meriting further attention, especially in the coming era of mobile payments.

One wonders, for instance, if poor people will ever start to trust an SMS confirmation as opposed to a hand-to-hand transfer of money. Expatriates from Bangladesh seem to have overcome this fear, and the Grameen Bank has been working with the government to provide expatriates the chance to send money to their relatives back home using mobile phones.