Nokia is asking for submissions to the mobile applications innovation contest. The winner will get US$30,000, second place $15,000 and third place $10,000. This is appropriate, given the last post on opportunities in the ICT sector.
Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer program, challenges mobile and web application developers worldwide to submit best-in-class applications for use on Nokia devices.
Here are the 3 categories -
Internet innovation – Calling on web developers to transform consumer-focused ideas into real applications on Nokia devices using technologies that include Nokia Web Runtime, XHTML, CSS, Java Script, AJAX, widgets and other standards-based web technologies.
Flash – Challenging creative developers and designers to build compelling applications that expand the capabilities and user benefits of Flash Lite on Nokia devices.
Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities – Urging developers to create innovative applications across mobile technology platforms – ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms. All applications will be considered, including those developed using Java, Python, or open source. f your submission in this category is specific to the “Emerging Markets” type of applications, it should work on Nokia Series 40 devices, such as the Nokia 2323 classic or the Nokia 2330 classic.
CIO Pakistan has been producing some great content. One of my favorite series there is The Blindspot by Salman Ansari. Salman is the CEO of SATC, and he was one of the speakers at the recent CIO YearAhead conference in Karachi on the 31st of March, 2009.
Check out the blindspot video interview series, especially this one in which Salman talks about opportunities in Telecom sector in Pakistan. You can tell that Salman believes in action and in controlling your own destiny – just the kind of mindset that we need during tough times. Kudos to Salman for speaking on these topics and motivating us.
Salman is also the architect behind the original IT Policy and during the CIO conference he talked about everything from the fact that the government seemed to be asleep at the wheel to how critical collaboration is to the future of Pakistan. Salman is also active at Telecom Grid Pakistan and contributes to other online group discussions as well.
Nokia and Etisalat have announced a collaboration that will allow Nokia to provide advance Internet services to Nokia users in the region. Etisalat will provide a convenient means of payment to Nokia users willing to subscribe to paid Nokia services. As a first step, Nokia users will be able to purchase games on Nokia’s N-Gage platform and pay for Ovi-Maps services. The purchases will be made over the air and Etisalat will charge the amount to the customer’s bill. This is a very convenient and safe option as opposed to the use of Credit cards and other similar payment options. UAE will be the first country from the region to offer this service in Q2 2009.
This is very interesting to mention here that if you can use this service to pay for mobile applications, games and services, you can use it for other payments as well. For example, you can use the same mechanism for sending gifts to friends, you can use it for buying items at grocery stores or paying other utility bills, and everything is eventually charged to your monthly Etisalat bill.
In Pakistan, Etisalat is holding shares in PTCL and a similar payment model has been in place in the country for payments of PTCLDSL service and IP TV subscription. Those who subscribe to DSL orIP TV, the subscriptions are billed to the customers in their monthly phone bill. I would love to make other payments in the same way if it adds the luxury of convenience to the payment process.
In the first funding of its type, Universal Service Fund of Pakistan (USF) provided contracts worth Rs. 1.4 Billion in total, for providing Broadband Services in the un-served urban areas of Faisalabad Telecom Region (FTR). PTCL and Wateen Telecom won this round of contracts: PTCL will provide 72,500 broadband connections and Wateen Telecom will provide 16,500 connections. The Faisalabad telecom region comprises of districts of Faisalabad, Jhang, Sargodha, Toba Tek Singh, Khushab, Bhakkar and Mianwali, excluding the served city of Faisalabad.
Readers of this blog may recall the earlier posts that we did to highlight and appreciate the work by USF and its leadership. Universal Service Fund (USF) is made up of contributions by telecom service providers of Pakistan. In the last decade, Pakistan has made impressive progress in providing voice telephony services crossing 60% tele-density, but broadband proliferation in the country is still very low and there are less than 300,000 broadband connections in the country. Furthermore, almost all these connections are concentrated in around 15 big cities of the country. Universal Service Fund (USF) is working to bridge that gap.
USF has ambitious and comprehensive plans to improve lives through broadband and connectivity. Read more information from the USF press release:
CEO of USF, Parvez Iftikhar, informed that FTR, has 56 towns and cities of various sizes with numerous potential broadband users like, hospitals, distance learning centers of Open University, Banks, NADRA centers/kiosks, Government Offices, Libraries, Courts, Industries and various other institutions, in addition to a population of more than 3 Million that could benefit. He further informed that a major highlight of this project will be the establishment of more than 250 Educational Broadband Centres in all the High-Schools and Colleges in these towns and cities, besides more than 100 Community Broadband Centres will be set up which will provide Broadband to those who cannot afford their own computers. He acknowledged the tremendous cooperation, help and support of the Ministry of IT and PTA, without which this landmark could not be achieved.
CEO USF also informed that bids for the next three similar projects have already been called through Press and Websites for the areas around Multan, Hyderabad and Mansehra. These will be followed by more projects till the whole country is covered. Moreover, bids for three more Projects of Basic Rural Telecom and two of Optic Fiber expansion in Baluchistan are also awaited.
M-health initiatives continue to gain ground. The recent ICTD 2009 conference at Carnegie Mellon Qatar has some good case studies. Among other topics, the conference panels discussed the emerging opportunities in ICTD (Information and Communications Technology and Development ) as the result of the penetration of mobile telephony.
Dr. Artur Dubrawski, Director of the AutonLab at Carnegie Mellon University and Mr. Nuwan Waidyanatha, Senior Researcher and Project Director of LIRNEAsia in Sri Lanka, are presenting their collaborative project using mobile telephony. The project uses the T-Cube Web Interface, a tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University to visualize and manipulate large scale multivariate time series datasets, to support real-time bio-surveillance. “We are excited to present our project at this year’s conference”, says Mr. Waidyanatha. “Health workers in the field will input patient and symptom data into a form on their mobile phones, which will immediately update a central database. The database will be available to central health organizations, and is designed to support rapid detection and mitigation of bio-medical threats in developing countries by improving the response time to analyzing the data.” The program is currently in pilot in Sri Lanka and India. “We see many different applications for this type of program across other areas,” comments Dr. Dubrawaki. “We look forward to meeting the other delegates at the conference and presenting our program, with the intention to expand our own project to other fields as well as to learn about their technologies”.
Product search is one of the most popular category of search. There are various flavors of product search services but few have done a good job at it. The difficulty arises because of large data sets and because information about product inventory is hard to aggregate. Watch this new video from Google as they attempt to provide a better mobile product search.
As of today, when you type a product query on Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser, you’ll get Google Product Search results nicely formatted for your phone. You can see online ratings, reviews, prices, and product details if you’re out and about, or just do some mobile web surfing from your couch. Whether you’re trying to decide between two digital cameras while you’re in a store or checking out prices for a new product that you’ve just seen on TV, we hope Google Product Search for mobile helps you to make better-informed shopping choices.
I wrote about the shift in Nokia’s focus towards Pakistan last year. I am glad to see that Nokia is continuing in the right direction. Providing service at the local level is one of the ways to gain insights into the needs of diverse markets and it is one of Nokia’s strengths. I wonder if LG and Samsung will do the same thing – it will be good for the local job market as more trained technicians get employment.
Nokia so far has launched 7 care centres in the major cities of Pakistan located in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Faisalabad, Peshawar and now in Multan. Nokia Care will provide customers with the required help and assistance needed to ensure best performance of their Nokia devices & engage Nokia’s global concept of ‘Connecting People’ through these care centers.
The Magic Jack is a USB stick This is the technology used by ATT, T-Mobile and the vast majority of mobile operators of US. The stick allows to plug into any laptop or PC. It also has a socket for a standard (landline) phone. You can make and receive phone calls using your landline phone, effectively replacing your existing landline phone service with your internet broadband connection. This has the potential to be a really disruptive innovation. The goals are very ambitious and we should wait for reports from trials and early launches. At this time, the Magic Jack is only sold in the US and Canada.
What really stirred my interest was the proposal to incorporate a GSM femtocell inside a slightly enlarged Magic Jack USB stick, with additional functionality enabling use with a standard GSM phone.
Some issues which need consideration:
Licenced Spectrum, Interference, SIM card. One needs licenced spectrum to run this service, even at very low power. Has Magic Jack done a deal with an existing network to use some of theirs? Will the power level be so low that the network isn’t worried about interference? Does it require you to switch mobile network and/or install a different SIM card?
Location Lock. Different networks have different licenced spectrum in different places. How will the system ensure that you are using the permitted frequencies, or block service where it is not available.
Frequency accuracy. The GSM system has some very tight tolerances for transmission frequency, which helps reduce the cost of handsets, avoid interference and poor network performance in the neighbourhood, and ensure a clean continuous quality. This needs a very good, accurate and stable clock reference within the basestation – typically requiring an expensive crystal oscillator that is calibrated for long term accuracy. You can’t just use the crystals found in handsets which cost less than a dollar.
Some user implications to bear in mind:
You have to have your laptop/computer switched on to make/receive calls
It’s GSM, not 3G, so primarily aimed at voice/text
Unlikely to be able to handover calls when entering/leaving premises
Might need a new SIM card for the specific operator
Media has reported that Etisalat is thinking about gaining majority stake in PTCL. What would Etisalat gain from this? When will be a good time to make that additional investment? The core issue for Etisalat include the management of workforce and to capitalize on potential of PTCL. Without any insider information, my guesstimate is that ineffeciencies in PTCL are any where from 5-15%. What do you think? I think another interesting question to ask will be: Based on the recent performance of PTCL, will you buy PTCL shares?
Etisalat is considering raising its stake in PTCL from the 26 per cent it bought for $2.6bn in 2005 to 51 per cent, Mr Omran said, giving Etisalat operational control.
“We have an option in our original contract to increase our stake in PTCL by 25 per cent. However, timing as to when we will do it is not decided yet,” he said. “This is definitely an option under consideration but it is not happening in immediate future.”
Mr Omran said that although Etisalat had the first option to increase its stake, Pakistan government regulations allowed offers from other operators, and that could be a long procedure.
He said the company was also keen to bid for a 3G licence in Pakistan.
Apple says it is on the verge of launching a new iPhone operating system that will remove many of the objections and obstacles for developers. Along with the new OS there is a new toolkit which t is expected to add about 1,000 functions to help developers come up with new applications. I selected 2 examples related to health and wellness, mentioned in a WSJ article.
For some developers, the new building blocks have opened up possibilities for new health-related iPhone accessories. LifeScan Inc., of Milipitas, Calif., a Johnson & Johnson-owned company that makes glucose monitors, recently demonstrated a software program it hopes will help make it easier for diabetes patients to communicate their glucose levels to caregivers and family. The program, taking advantage of the iPhone’s new ability to connect with accessories wirelessly, reads the patient’s glucose level from the monitor, then transmits it through the phone.
Similarly, Jon Ulmer, founder of Luminant Software, the Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of the popular Pedometer iPhone application, says he is considering a wireless heart-rate monitor to work with his software program.
Technology Review reports that researchers have been able to hijack mobile phone connections and data.
In a presentation today at Black Hat Europe, a computer-security conference in Amsterdam, a group of researchers claimed to have found a way to hijack the data sent to and from mobile phones. The researchers say that the attack might be used to glean passwords or to inject malicious software onto a device.
Mobile phones are becoming ever more useful for transmitting data in addition to making voice calls, and they’re increasingly being used for sensitive activities such as online banking, as well as for searching the Internet and downloading mobile games.
The new attack relies on a protocol that allows mobile operators to give a device the proper settings for sending data via text message, according to Roberto Gassira, Cristofaro Mune, and Roberto Piccirillo, security researchers for Mobile Security Lab, a consulting firm based in Italy. By faking this type of text message, according to the protocol an attacker can create his own settings for the victim’s device. This would allow him to, for example, reroute data sent from the phone via a server that he controls. The researchers say that the technique should work on any handset that supports the protocol, as long as the attacker knows which network the victim belongs to and the network does not block this kind of message.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has completed all targets and goals for the first quarter (January to March) of 2009. An Authority meeting was held at PTA Headquarters to review the progress on the targets and goals set for the year 2009.
The meeting was chaired by Chairman PTA Dr Mohammed Yaseen, Member Finance S. Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member technical Dr Khawar Siddique Khokhar and attended by senior officers of the Authority.
On this occasion, progress of various division and directorates of PTA including Finance, Commercial Affairs, Technical Services, Enforcement, Law, Strategy & Development, Economic Affairs and Human Resources was reviewed. The progress was reviewed at length on survey of telecom services including mobile operators, reduction in illegal telecom traffic and blocking of IMEI of mobile handsets. It was decided in the meeting that PTA will continue to implement technical solutions to address these issues. It was also decided that consultancies will be carried out on various technical subjects for the benefit of the telecom industry.
It was informed in the meeting that new Numbering Plan for AJ&K and Northern Areas has successfully been implemented with parallel operations for the convenience of telecom users in these areas. It was also informed that PTA has prepared a Disaster Communication Plan to use telecom services effectively in a natural calamity and disaster-hit areas. During the meeting polices to improve human resources in PTA were also discussed.
Chairman PTA showed satisfaction on the progress made by different divisions and directorates of PTA.
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