Archive for August 24th, 2008

Call Centers Under Scrutiny

Published by Babar Bhatti on August 24, 2008 under Business, Call Centers, Government Regulations, Information Technology, Strategy & Policy

The call centers in Pakistan are under scruity by the “Vigilance Cell” of PTA. A recent directive posted on the PTA siteasks call centers to provide IP addresses and gateway information to PTA by August 27. Apparently there were suspicions that call centers are abusing their telecom/bandwidth facilities for purposes other than what they were. This initiative is in cooperation with Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) which is the government owned trade organization for promotion of software and call center industry in Pakistan.

As a regulator, PTA has a mandate to ensure that call centers are operating within the specified guidelines. For this purpose it may ask for information about its operations, technology and business. I hope that this process of compliance will not become a burden for the small number of call centers operating in Pakistan. Daily Times quoted the President of Association of Call Centre Operators (ACCO) Pakistan as saying that he lauds the PTA’s move.

All is good if it ends here. But I think that this cat and mouse game will continue to play for a while as those who are trying to trick the system will probably find ways to evade the vigilance cell.

Technology Blogs Thrive But Plagiariasm Continues

Published by Babar Bhatti on August 24, 2008 under Business, Consumer Rights, Digital Convergence, Education, ICT, Telecommunications, blogging

Over the last few years the landscape for technology information has changed quite a bit. Blogs and discussion forums have become a major source of information for many, replacing traditional journalism. Despite Internet infrastructure issues and the bandwidth limitation, this trend is appparent for Pakistan as well. Bloggers have contributed in all areas as one can see at Bloggers.Pk. The rise in technical and telecommunication blogs in Pakistan is a positive trend but there are a few problems and challenges such as copied content, low quality of content and personal attacks.

Plagiarism continues to be a problem in two ways. First, when some bloggers use content from other sites without proper acknowledgement. Many of these blogs don’t add any real value - they are there just to earn advertisement money. I would urge these folks to re-think their short-term thinking. Secondly, there are print magazines like FLARE which copy content from Internet openly. FLARE has recently started stealing content from Pakistani blogs as well. For example see how the latest issue of FLARE recently copied these posts from ProPakistani blog (here, here and here). In the past FLARE did the same by taking content from my blog. Apparently the advertisers in FLARE are either unaware or insensitive to the lack of ethics. Whatever the reason my be, it is only a matter of time before such practices will be exposed.

On a positive note, this indicates that blogs have become the dominant source of original and fresh content. These blogs provide a valuable feedback loop for the companies operating in Pakistan. Bloggers should continue to think, write and analyse the technology industry despite the problems mentioned above.