State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

I signed up for an interesting service at www.contxts.com which allows you to send your business card to people via SMS. Contxts.com only works in US and is pretty neat. Is there any such service in Pakistan?

What with the environment in shambles do you really want to be that guy who is handing out chopped up pieces of bleached trees? We here at Contxts.com think that our site will solve this problem and more.

I came across an interesting segmentation of users and applications for mobile phones. Here’s the view, taken from Forrester Research.

The choices for audio conferencing in Pakistan are rather limited. PTCL is one of the main provider of audio conferencing service with features such as UAN (Universal Access Number), PIN number, scheduled or on-demand conference and up to 120 participants per conference.

The website is sloppy, even by PTCL standards. Just read for yourself:

Our Audio conferencing services are easy to use with interesting billing packages, designed for maximum user comfort and convinience with web integrated interface.

For details see this FAQ page or call PTCL helpline at +92 111-227-027.

If you have tried PTCL or any other audio conferencing in Pakistan, share your experiences with readers.

Alcatel-Lucent today announced that Nayatel is preparing to deploy the first gigabit passive optical network (GPON) in Pakistan. This blazing fast network will provide its customers with the most advanced triple-play services – such as high-definition television, innovative telephony services and ultraband Internet access. Nayatel’s Pakistani customers can expect the new network to be up and running by the end of 2009. Wahaj us Siraj, CEO, Nayatel said:

In 2005, Nayatel was the first operator to deploy a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network solution in South Asia, and today we have once again pioneered the Pakistani market by becoming the first adopter of GPON technology in the country.

With Alcatel-Lucent’s industry-leading GPON solution, we will be able to offer our customers a whole new range of next-generation, ultraband applications that leverage our network’s true gigabit speeds. All in all, we will soon be able to offer our customers a service experience which was once only dreamed in this part of the world.

“Nayatel’s GPON deployment in Pakistan, will enable their end-users to truly experience the power of next-generation triple-play services,” said Vincenzo Nesci, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s business in the Middle East and Africa. “This contract highlights Nayatel’s continuous confidence in our solutions and expertise,” he adds.

According to the latest MRG IPTV Market Leaders report , Alcatel-Lucent dominates the global IPTV Access market with a 41% market share (four times the market share of its nearest competitor). In its report, MRG confirms that Alcatel-Lucent is the only vendor focusing on all four (geographic) regions, and is deployed in 10 out of the top 25 IPTV service providers worldwide. From an FTTH perspective, Alcatel-Lucent has more than 90 fiber deployments ongoing worldwide, with a mix of GPON and point-to-point roll-outs.

Cross post from Basit Ali’s blog

I was really excited to see U-Track maps‘ availability on Ufone’s website. According to my earlier post, the usage charges are very high but I was still interested to check it out at least. As promised, here I come with a review of the solution.

Introduction

U-Track maps is an XHTML based mobile website. I was expecting it to be an installable application. Anyways, before I go in details of the application features, I must tell you a bit about the background.

If you try using the solution, you will, almost instantly notice that its an integration with Naqsha.net. Well, Naqsha.net is one of the serious efforts done so far in navigation domain in Pakistan, but I must say, things are pretty pre-mature right now and Naqsha.net. Moreover, integrating with U-fone, they have tried to increaset there user base significantly, which is a good sign. On the other hand, they have not anticipated such big traffic loads, especially during the first few day’s free trial time and their site seems broken at several points (see below).

Solution Walk-through

As soon as I got a Ufone connection, I dived in and launched the device browser. The first link on ufone’s mobile site http://wap.ufone.com was U-track maps.

I opened it up, selected the city and the only thing I could do on the page was “Search”.

I typed a search string and quite a long list of related items came up. I selected one of the item and I could see its location on somewhat nastily orange-themed rip-off from Google maps images. That’s it! You cant do much more than that.

The map that shows up, is well, kind of detailed but its in small size, its irritating orange and green colored, road and place names are hardly readable and until you know the city well you cant figure out much from this map. That really kills the need of navigation anyways. I could see three options under the map, 1) View Larger Image, 2) Make a route and 3) Search nearby, but all 3 of the links were broken (actually application crashed or something, was that because of the heavy traffic load?). See video for details.

Feature Feedback
Following is the feature list and comments for each feature:

Solution Type
Web-based mobile application/web-site. I expected it to be a GPS-enabled or at least location aware installable application.

Search Places
Search results are quite detailed ( the list is usually long) but they are irrelevant to your current location. In addition, only names of the search results are listed, no additional information like phone numbers, web links, email address, nothing! You can select a location and can view it on map.

View on Map
You can select one item from the search results and can view it on map. The site shows an image showing a street map with a marker showing the destination. If you select a road to be shown on map, it shows two markers named Start and End.

View larger map image
When viewing a map, you may want to see a detailed map. This feature is available but the link broken. (See video)

Make a route
This was the only exciting feature for me but unfortunately, this link was broken as well
(See video)

Search nearby
Link broken again (See video)

Review Summary
In short, the solution is a total-disappointment. Most of the features are not working, but even if all its features start working, it is no-where near its available competitions. I will soon write a post about its competitors.

The Good:

• The application is browser based, so the number of supported handsets is very large.
• A lot of places have been listed and are available for search, thanks to Naqsha.net

The Bad:

• There is no way you can search near your current location, no self-location detection mechanism utilized (GPS or Cell tower location)
• No details, phone numbers, email , web-link or photo etc. available for the public locations/businesses available in the search.
• The names of the roads, places and locations are hardly readable on the map.
• Orange color dominance on the map (just because of Ufone color) is really irritating.
• No voice support (obviously being a web page) for people using it as in-car navigation system.
• Too costly as discussed in my last post

The Ugly

• Make-a-route option to your searched destination, the link is broken.
• View large map, link broken
• Search-nearby, link broken

I will soon write a detailed post on U-track map’s available competitions. Stay tuned!

By any count, the number of conferences, seminars and industry events have gone up. Here’s a picture of the top executives at an industry seminar by Nokia Siemens Networks. NSN has recently won some good size projects and is doing well.

Like I had mentioned in my previous post, the Nokia Bloggers Meet-up was held on 22nd May at The Sports Bar – Karachi. The event wasn’t just a bloggers meet-up but also a sneak-peak of N97.

N97- The new entrant in the Nokia’s flagship N-series is due to launch in Pakistan in first week of June. This time Nokia came different and thus was this pre-launch meet-up with the bloggers.

Mr. Adeel Hashmi, Communication Manager – Nokia Pakistan, started off the event giving an introduction to the idea of meeting the bloggers for the pre-launch and promised more of such meet-ups. The keynote speakers of the evening were Mr. Khurram Pradhan, Product and Portfolio Manager and Ms. Shabana Shahzad, Program Manager.

Khurram Pradhan gave his presentation on the main theme of N97 – Personal Internet. In his presentation he also focused on what’s driving the transformation of converged devices. He discussed that Nokia has been working on converging mobile phone with internet from last decade to enhance the personal internet experience.

At present out of the 1.3 billion internet users 520 million use it on mobile device and research has indicated this figure will go up to 1.5 billion by the year 2012. Nokia being consumer centric is on the move to make the mobile broadband dream a reality.

Not only this Nokia also plans to attract the market where we have 93 million users using the social network services like facebook, my space and twitter on their mobile devices, 82 million downloading maps on their devices, 22.3 million access the internet on devices daily for news and information and where we also have 184 million blogs among which 77%  are actively read and commented. In efforts of enriching the networking experience, the N97 comes with third party widgets, which are standalone programs on your mobile home screen.

Nokia’s customer care is a two dimensional strategy, one, devices for connecting people and second devices for connecting places which it achieves along with Ovi Maps.

Foreseeing the future in application development Nokia has acquired all of the rights to the Symbian operating system (OS) and open sourced it under the Eclipse license.

Khurram’s part ended with a Q and A session and then came the most interesting and most awaited SNEAK PEAK at the N97. Ms. Shabana Shahzad conducted it. Bloggers were also given the feel-it experience of N97.

Some of the N97 features are:

- Easy and fast connections to internet services
- Easy text input with QWERTY keyboard and touch screen
- 3.5 inch sliding tilt display
- Live personalized home screen with widgets
- Up-to-date information via RSS feed
- Fully compatible with Oviservices
- Browse real web pages
- Take pictures and videos and share them immediately
- Watch high-quality video on the large 3.5 inch 16:9 widescreen
- Video playback at 30 fps, for a wide array of formats
- Play videos, music and pictures on TV using TV-out
- Access internet video feeds through Nokia Video Center
- Enjoy great audio through standard 3.5 mm jack headphones, built-in stereo speakers or Bluetooth technology
- Digital music player with support for play list editing, equalizer and categorized access to your music collection
- Search, browse and purchase songs online in Nokia Music Store (for availability, please visit www.music.nokia.com)
- Nokia Maps with integrated compass and A-GPS receiver
- Multimedia city guides and navigation services. Drive: voice guided car navigation, or Walk: pedestrian-optimized turn-by-turn guidance. (Navigation may need to be purchased separately.)
- World-class game titles with N-Gage
- Make you home-screen private any time you want

N97 Tech Profile:

System:        WCDMA 900/1900/2100 (HSDPA), EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
User Interface:    S60 5th Edition
Dimensions:    117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm*mm (L x W x H) *18.25 mm at camera area
Weight:        Approx. 150 g
Display:        3.5 inch TFT with up to 16 million colorsnHD16:9 widescreen (640×360 pixels)
Battery:         Nokia Battery BP-4L, 1500 mAh
Memory:        Up to 48GB (32 GB on-board memory, plus 16GB expansion via micro SD memory card slot)
Video playback:    MPEG-4 / SP and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264,up to 30 fps, up to VGA resolution Real Video up to QCIF @ 30 fps Windows Media (WMV9) up to CIF @ 30 fps Flash Lite 3.0 / Flash Video in internet browser
Music playback:    MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA
Lens:        Carl Zeiss Tessar™
Image capture:    Up to 5 mega pixels (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7 million/24-bit color)
Video capture:    MPEG-4 VGA (640 x 480) at up to 30 fps
Aperture:        F2.8
Focal length:    5.4 mm
Flash:        Dual LED camera flash and video light
Talk time:        Up to 320 min (3G), 400 min (GSM)
Standby time:    Up to 400 hrs (3G), 430 hrs (GSM)
Video playback:    Up to 4,5 hours (offline mode)
Music playback:    Up to 37 hours (offline mode)

The device shall be availabe here in second week of june at an expected retail price of Rs. 60,000.

This post is next in the series of e-learning related stories. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Mobilink signed an agreement to facilitate literacy among adolescent girls in Pakistan using mobile phones. The first phase of the program will target 250 learners in Punjab. 

The traditional mode of learning based on text books has many challenges. It takes significant resources - time and money – to updates curriculum, print and distribute the books. Delivering education services via a widely available digital channel such as cell phones has many benefits. The key to a successful education porgram is to involve educationists and to fine tune the content and delivery according to local needs and cultural conditions. Another big advantage of electronic / distance learning is how content can be re-used and distributed to a very large number of users without much additional cost.

I hope that Mobilink will share more information (such as screen views of the application and content details) and publish the lessons learned from the intial phase of this program.

UNESCO says it will be the first time anywhere in the world that mobile phones are used to facilitate literacy by providing post-literacy materials as messages on a mobile phone.

The agency notes that in order to maintain literacy skills after basic literacy courses, the new literates should have constant access to reading materials at least for three months after learning to read. However, it points out, for most of the new literates in Pakistan, reading materials are scarce and the occasions to use the acquired literacy skills are rare.

As a result, after graduating from basic literacy courses, the new literates return to a non-literate environment and it is difficult for them to retain their newly acquired literacy skills.

Under UNESCO and Mobilink programme, adolescent girls will receive interesting and informative text messages in Urdu and are expected to respond.

The second part of the programme includes evaluation every month to assess the knowledge that learners have gained, interactive exercises, a glossary of educational terms and additional resources.

At the Nokia Blogger Meet-Up yesterday, Mr. Khurram Pradhan, Portfolio and Product Manager (Nokia Pakistan) shared this video in his presentation.

This video shows the transformation from the silver screen to the FOURTH SCREEN as he says is all about the paradigm shift. Soon cell phones will no longer be ‘cell phones’. Personal computing is transforming to mobile computing which will make your internet personal.

The device from Nokia that does it all -the N97- will launch in Pakistan next month. Stay tuned to get its sneak peak before its actual launch.

Google has been working with books for a while. I like the trend of bringing books to the mobiles. Right now the collection is very small but I think it has immense potential for learning and spreading knowledge in a scalable way. There are already some people in Pakistan who are working on cool Urdu applications – may be they can adapt the new trends and combine them with their research?

Google launched mobile versions of more than 1.5 million public-domain books, available on iPhones and Android phones. Google Book Search already supports a huge library of scanned books, which can be searched and read online if they’re in the public domain, or previewed if they’re still subject to copyright. But the company says that the existing versions of these books (images of scanned pages) didn’t work well on mobile devices.

The (new) technology allows Google to automatically understand the structure of the book–headers, paragraphs, and in-line illustrations–so that it can be reformatted for mobile devices.

But what particularly sets the system apart is its scale. The mobile versions of these books are full of small, clever touches. For example, the system loads up the next few pages of a book in advance, reducing lag time when the user turns the page.

Coinciding with the World Telecom day 2009, Universal Service Fund has signed contracts for providing Optic Fiber Connectivity to un-served Tehsils in Balochistan and Telecom Services in Rural Larkana. It is good that USF is going to remote areas which deserve more attention for technology infrastructure. For instance, Balochistan has the lowest penetration rate for mobile telephony.

CEO of Universal Service Fund, Parvez Iftikhar informed that two new projects of Universal Service Fund are being awarded. One is to provide optic Fiber connectivity to 5 un-served Tehsils of Balochistan (Dasht, Noshki, Dalbandin, Mashkhel and Taftan, touching also the cities of Dringar, Ahmadwal, Nokundi and Chaghi). He added that a subsidy Rs. 374 Million is being provided to Wateen Telecom for laying 900 kilometers of Optic Fiber Cable to these Tehsils which have a population of around 335,000. Second project, he further informed, is to provide basic telephony and data services in unserved areas of Larkana and Shikarpur districts. 72 muzas with a population of 165,000 will benefit. Subsidy of Rs. 228 Million is being provided to PTCL for this project.

I am happy to report on the continuing partnership between my alma mater University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore and Huawei Technologies (see this related post). Recently UET celebrated the World Telecom Day 2009 with collaboration of Huawei Technologies in Al-Khawarizmi Institute of Computer Science, UET, Lahore. This is the right way to support research and development – think global, act local.

The technology leaders and decision makers of telecom industry attended the event. The Chief Technical Officer of Huawei Technologies Mr Li Ke was the guest of honor. In addition Ch. Irfan (CTO Warid), Dr. Tanveer (CTO Zong) and Mr. Mian Zulqarnain Amir, Secretary Information Technology joined the event. Minister of Education, Mian Mujtuba Shuja-ur-Rahman was Chief Guest.

The Vice-Chancellor, University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore said that UET has been playing its major role in the academia and industry of Pakistan. To step up its contribution towards the telecom industry, UET joined hands with Huawei technologies, China. As a result, Huwaei UET Joint telecom IT Centre was established in the university premises. In 2003, Huawei provided UET its latest GSM equipment that was worth 3million USD. And now in 2008, Huawei has provided the latest high-tech GSM/GPRS equipment that makes the centre worth 8.3 million USD in full amount. He also said that Huawei Center is providing a platform to Engineers for their trainings and practice on the equipment which they cannot perform in the field. The centre also strengthens the industry-academia relation by offering different training courses to the students of engineering universities all over Pakistan. This way HUTIC proves to be a great learning opportunity for the students as well as professionals at a national level. It is a symbol of Pak-China friendship.

Mr. Ikram ullah Qureshi, Telecom Businessman congratulated the efforts of UET, Lahore and Huawei Technology China in setting up this joint venture. He said that the Huawei-UET joint Center is a win-win strategy for Huawei and UET, Lahore as it provides access to latest technology to students of UET and other universities and a world class facility for Huawei engineers and customers.
The Chief Technical Officers of main Telecom Industries of Pakistan also highlighted the importance of technology in education sector and academia-industry collaboration. They emphasized the need of greater research opportunities for the bright engineering students of Pakistan and that the Huawei-UET joint center is an important step towards achieving this objective.