Archive for August 7th, 2008

Competition Commission of Pakistan Vs. Mobilink

Published by Babar Bhatti on August 7, 2008 under BlackBerry, Business, Competitive Trends, Consumer Rights, Government Regulations, Pakistan, SIM, mobile phones

As reported in the media, The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has said that Mobilink is involved in an unreasonably restrictive trade practice by not allowing its blackberry subscribers to other service providers. Before reading this news I did not know that there was a government department called Competition Commission of Pakistan … see their website. The issue here is that whether Mobilink can lock subscribers by providing them a subsidized Blackberry handset. It would be interesting to see Mobilink’s response and how this gets propagated to other mobile network operators such as Zong. This situation is very common in USA and it takes quite an effort to get a phone unlocked. By the way, isn’t PTA supposed to be involved in this as well?

The CCP has passed an order on the show-cause notice, issued by the MCA to Pakistan Mobile Communications Limited (Mobilink GSM) for carrying on unreasonable restrictive trade practices. The order said that currently the Mobilink GSM blackberry customer did not have any option to switch over to another service operator whether the SIM enabled or not.

Most of the customers were not aware about the SIM locking restriction. Similarly, no procedure was in place whereby the customer could seek unlocking of the SIM from Mobilink GSM, if it desired for the purposes of switching over to another network/service provider, said the order.

According to the order, the tie-in arrangement of bundling the handset, Mobilink’s telephone service and the blackberry service products through SIM locking has the effect of unreasonably preventing, restraining or otherwise lessening competition. In the Commission’s considered view, locking the SIM card in the handset and preventing its replacement restricts customers from changing their service provider. With no procedures in place for unlocking, it effectively deterred the consumer choice and mobility, it said.

A Phone Seller In Japan

Published by Babar Bhatti on August 7, 2008 under Business, mobile phones

We have been talking about the problems with unregistered SIMs and how it is changing the way phones are sold and how mobile operators are getting impacted. It seems that in other parts of the world phone (handset) makers are also under pressure because of competition and slower demand. See this report from Reuters about Japanese market. I found this picture (from Engadget) to be quite interesting!