State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Jehan Ara has been talking to some very interesting people. And you know what’s great about the interviews? You can be anywhere in the world but you can hear about  the positive work happening in Pakistan. Just a few years ago it was hard to stay in touch and figure out what everyone else in the small but growing tech space of Pakistan was doing. Now we have the right set of tools technologies and connectivity to spread the word and keep us connected.

Jehan Ara and team have proved that it is possible to inspire, even in difficult times like these. There’s an art to the interviews – finding interesting people, asking the right questions, making them comfortable and then allowing the interviewees to talk about their passion.

Such candid interviews present a picture of progress and accomplishments which is extremely important to share with the world. Sharing information and inspiration can result in unexpected side benefits as well. Moreover, these interviews have also connected people and some have resulted in business inquiries and joint venture opportunities.

In case you have missed some of the recent interviews, here are links to a few of the many:

• Azhar Rizvi – MITEF Pakistan, Tech Angels Network – Post, Interview
• Zafar Khan – Sofizar. Post, Interview
• Dr Arshad Ali – EECS – Post, Interview
• Farzal Dojki -  Post, Video
• Asharaf Kapadia – Post, Interview
• Shahzad Shahid – Post, Video

What motivates you to do all this, I asked Jehan Ara.

I am just so excited by all the innovation and growth that is taking place in this industry and I want to talk about it. If I make my guests comfortable enough so that they share information about themselves, their struggles, their successes, what motivates them, then I have been successful. I strive to ensure that their voices are heard.

Keep up the good work!

From 1st July 2009, PTCL and NTC numbers in Karachi and Lahore will change to 8 digits numbers. Add ‘3′ before PTCL numbers and ‘9′ before NTC numbers for dialing.

Example,
The PTCL number 466-xxxx will become 3466-xxxx and NTC number 912-xxxx becomes 9912-xxxx.

More at Fixed Line Numbers Going 8 Digits.

This is an introductory post on the topic of Telematics and how it could be used in Pakistan. Telematics refers to the convergence of telecommunications and information processing in the context of automobiles. Services which are enabled by telematics include safety and security (get help after a crash, ask for help with a dead battery, stolen car alert), convenience (traffic alerts, find an address, remotely unlock a door) and other (download content to car, book a hotel room). Telematics used to be offered by expensive car makers but it is now becoming mainstream rapidly.

Lets take a look at what components and technologies are involved in building a telematics solution.

• Hardware – TCU (Telematics Control Unit) – a box which is placed in the car and has GPS
• Connectivity for voice (call center) and data (GSM or CDMA for sms and TCP/IP data)
• Software (server-side platform which manages the entire solution)
• Services and applications (e.g. speech recognition, POI data, call center)

Overall building a telematics solution is very much like a systems integration work. From connecting the hardware to data centers, managing the wireless data and voice, providing the information to a specialized call center and coordinating the response with different types of providers (emergency, police, roadside assistance, insurance etc). Protocols are defined to communicate between different components and to handle messages in SMS format or to handle packet data.

Most common scenario of telematics is when a car is in accident. Modern TCUs can sense the crash and send the data automatically to the system, alerting a call center about the crash severity and the location. Emergency help can thus be sent. Other scenario is when a person gets stranded on a road and needs help, then the SOS button in the car is pushed and a call is initiated to the call center from the car. Of course a wireless signal is needed for the TCU to dial out. Similarly a call center can call back the car.

Fleet tracking (commercial vehicles – taxis, buses, company vans, trucks etc) is another big area where the cost of telematics is justified because of business advantages.

In developing countries, services such as stolen vehicle alert and location could be useful. Since a vast majority of the cars do not come with the hardware, retrofitting of cars with TCU/GPS units will be most common. Once there is connectivity and a way to send data over the air, many different solutions can be built. You can have a geo-fence application which can alert you if your car moves out of a certain radius. Parents can track the movement of the car when their kids are driving. Of course the modern cars have many sensor built into the car so one can imagine all kinds of automobile data being sent over the air. Vehicle data can be used for troubleshooting, diagnostics and maintenance alerts.

In Pakistan there are a few companies and groups working on telematics (perhaps as distributors of foreign hardware makers) but the market is not ready for massive adoption – most probably due to hardware cost, complexity of building solutions and the limited number of people who are willing to pay for such service. It usually takes the car makers a few years to plan out a complete telematics solution so we might see something in the next 2-3 years in limited models. At least a good and affrodable telecom and wirless infrastructure is in place in Pakistan to support the telematics services. There is plenty of activity in this area in India.

More info: here’s link from Wipro and a description at HowStuffWorks.

TeleomPk has been providing coverage of Telehealth or mobile health work in Asia. This post is a summary of the various efforts going on but of course, its not comprehensive. It would be great to have a national website where doctors, scientist, technologists, social workers and other stakeholders can discuss, share and publish their work.

Let’s start with research at the Next Generation Intelligent Networks Research Center of FAST University, Islamabad. Their work on Remote Patient Monitoring System with Focus on Antenatal Care (see past post) is funded by the National ICT R&D fund, Government of Pakistan, over the period of 3 years (2008-2010). The primary objective of this project is to develop a reliable, efficient and easily deployable remote patient monitoring system that can play a vital role in providing basic health services to the remote village population of Pakistan at their door step.

There’s more innovative work in this area by other groups as well. In this interview, Jehan Ara talks with a Pakistani researcher Jahanzeb Sherwani (prior coverage here) who has done doctoral level research at CMU about using speech recognition with local languages to collect information regarding rural health care. In this interview he talks about expanding the work out of the labs and to include more local languages. Excerpt from a post by Jehan Ara.

Jahanzeb has been more excited about the HealthLine PhD project that he has been working on with Hands, an NGO. Speech recognition is, he believes, the equalizer, the ultimate enabler. It doesn’t matter if you are illiterate or if you speak a different language.

LIRNEAsia also publishes work on m-health topic quite often. Much of their work looks at running surveys and working with local communities to gather data and to test out the technologies. They also work with Carnegie Mellon university on Bio-surveillance work.

Of course when it comes to developed countries there’s a lot of emphasis on reducing cost and for providing connected services whereby automation and intelligence can make devices and testing smart. Here’s ATT vision for medical remote monitoring (source: Fast Company). A number of other companies are active in this area. There’s also interest in providing monitoring and emergency services for senior citizens.

Lirneasia also publishes work on m-health topic quite often. Much of their work looks at running surveys and working with local communities to gather data and to test out the technologies. They also work with Carnegie Mellon university on Bio-surveillance work.

Please suggest any other sources which you think should be covered. Here’s another report from Africa about health care improvement.

Cell phones may have changed the way people communicate in the developed world, but in developing countries they’re going far beyond simple communication to bring new opportunities to areas that sorely need them. Case in point: FrontlineSMS:Medic, a new initiative to improve health care in poor, rural villages.

Read more »

Cross post from Basit Ali’s Blog

All Facebook users who also carry a BlackBerry must rejoice and should try out version 1.6.0.17 that is out now and is available to download. Simply go to the existing Facebook application and select to upgrade. If you don’t have the app on your BlackBerry phone already, you can download it from here. I have been using the Facebook app on my BlackBerry for a while now but it always lacked many features and the wap site m.facebook.com was always better. I’ve also been trying some third party tools like shozu and snaptu for Facebook access but none of them have been as simple, comprehensive and convenient as the wap site. This time, the development team has done the job very well and has given a feature boost to the application and now I don’t use the wap site anymore.

The new features include:

• A new and improved home screen that shows status updates.
• You can comment on these statuses
• A new “View Highlights” screen that shows photos posted by users, status updates, wall posts, photo comments, relationship status changes, phone number changes and a bundle of other updates.
• Capability of commenting from the above mentioned “View Highlights” screen.
• An improved Notification page

Photo gallery — View Highlights

• An improved Friend’s list that allows, not only to poke and message friends, but lets you call them, view their profile.
• The user profile screen that lets you view updates from a friend and yes, my favorite, browse and view the albums and photos
• An amazing album and photo gallery? Watching photos from Facebook friends’ albums is a charm on this app. Did I mention that already?
• Photo gallery allows you to browse and scroll through the photos, zoom into the photos and set photos as the BB home screen.

View Profile —– Upload and Tag Photos

All existing features including poke, message, write on wall, invite friends, tag and upload photos etc are also there and are complemented by the new features and they complement the new features too.

The app also allows you to sync your Facebook and Blackberry contacts. You can connect Facebook profiles with existin entries on your Blackberry contacts, you can request phone numbers of Facebook friends and you can also search for people in your Blakcberry contacts on Facebook and add them up.

Following wizard came up on my web-based Facebook when I logged in just after installing the new Facebook app on my Blackberry.

You can watch the usage video posted below to get an idea of the new feature’s working.

Note, I carry a non-wifi Blackberry, so the application looks a bit slow in the video.

Summary
Overall, the application is a hit. I don’t find many drawbacks in the app.

The good:

• View albums: Its smooth, shows album name, preview photo and number of photos in it. Nice side-wise scrolling transitions.
• View photos: Amazing full screen photo viewing with photo title/info and swapping between photos in an album is a charm. Side wise scrolling thumbnails make it look so good.
• View profiles: A new feature with great options like view photos, poke, message and profile activity of the user.
• Great contact sync: Allows you to sync your Facebook contacts with Blackberry contacts and vise-versa.
• Request phone number: You can request a Facebook user’s phone number and can sync it with the phone so that you can use it for calling. I got to talk to a few very old friends just because of this feature.

The Bad

• The earlier Facebook notification system worked great with the Blackberry holster. (Facebook notification rings, you pull out the phone and notification is right on the screen). Things are not that good with this version. Notification system doesn’t work. Doesn’t work at all. But this is a very small glitch and I’m sure things will be fixed in next version.
• Facebook experience on Blackberry is still behind Facbook experience on an iPhone.

As we discussed last year in this post, Zong has confirmed its plans to continue investing and expanding in Pakistan. As background to this, see the total number of sites by companies at 2008 end (source: PTA).

The daily times report (with some obvious errors corrected – it was full of mistakes) states:

China Mobile Pakistan has planned to maximise the coverage capacity of its cellular phone operator-Zong-by increasing its number of cellular sites up to 9,000 across the country with an investment of $500 million by the end of 2009.

According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country had overall 26,300 cellular sites by the end of 2008. Five operators have added 8,966 networking sites in the first half of the current fiscal year 2008-09.

The Chinese company has invested $1.66 billion so far in Pakistan, including $600 million invested in the closing fiscal year 2008-09, which is a handsome contribution to foreign direct investment (FDI) in telecommunication and IT industry.

According to the officials, the company will invest more to increase its number of services and sale centres across the country that would also generate more number of job opportunities.

Interesting research about understanding the background noise of a phone.

Researchers are increasingly using cell phones to better understand users’ behavior and social interactions. The data collected from a phone’s GPS chip or accelerometer, for example, can reveal trends that are relevant to modeling the spread of disease, determining personal health-care needs, improving time management, and even updating social-networks. The approach, known as reality mining, has also been suggested as a way to improve targeted advertising or make cell phones smarter: a device that knows its owner is in a meeting could automatically switch its ringer off, for example.

A group at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH, has created software that uses the microphone on a cell phone to track and interpret a user’s activity. The software, called SoundSense, picks up sounds and tries to classify them into certain categories. In contrast to similar software developed previously, SoundSense can recognize completely unfamiliar sounds, and it also runs entirely on the device. SoundSense automatically classifies sounds as “voice,” “music,” or “ambient noise.” If a sound is repeated often enough or for long enough, SoundSense gives it a high “sound rank” and asks the user to confirm that it is significant and offers the option to label the sound.

Telenor has introduced a new package called Persona targeted for small and medium sized businesses. It seems to be a smart move and the product has good features. However the website needs some improvements.

Below is the main page of Persona which is linked from the home page. The flash design is not appropriate for business users. There is no text based information about the different parts of Persona Karobar unless you click on one of the images. I had to click twice (total three clicks from the home page) before I could get to the packages and pricing info. It should have been a single click.

There are other small things missing such as the page title does not spell out the purpose of the page but just says ‘Telenor’.

Thanks to Anam Khan for the post suggestion and information.

Continuing on the topic of leveraging the cloud computing technologies for telecom, here’s news about a unified mobile PBX in the cloud. The mobile PBX combines cellular fixed mobile convergence software, using open source telephony, and provides low-cost, hardware-Free mobile unified communications

Cellular Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) provider OnRelay announced the General Availability of its complete Mobile PBX solution, Unified MBX. Unified MBX is a software-only IP business communication system built for mobile phones. By pre-integrating OnRelay’s Cellular FMC software with a feature-rich open source IP PBX, Unified MBX provides Unified Communications (UC) without the expense of proprietary telephony hardware or IP PBX licenses.

Unified MBX can be deployed on-premises, or hosted in the cloud (which is the more interesting case of course) to provide mobile business communications as Software as a Service (SaaS). The ease of deployment was evidenced by the Unified MBX trials in Middle East where customers across ten countries self-installed with only remote OnRelay support.

Read more from the press release below.
Read more »

It was being heard from quite a long time that fixed line numbers will be going 8 digits to increase the pool of numbers available. This is now confirmed as reported by different media channels and news papers. An excerpt from Business Recorder follows.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) would shift its fixed line numbering plan from 7 to 8 digit series as per the instructions of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Initially migration from 7 series to 8 digit series would take place in Lahore and Karachi.

As per details, Digit “3″ will be added in all existing 7 digits numbers of Karachi and Lahore except the numbers starting from “9″. Digit “9″ will be added in all existing numbers starting from “9″. An important point to remember is the numbers are being added to existing numbers not area codes, with the exemption of army exchanges, which would remain same.

For the customer’s awareness and facilitation, the new series plan will run parallel to old one for a period of three months w.e.f. July 1, 2009 till September 30, 2009. The period from October 1, 2009 till December 30, 2009 will be covered by announcements which would be made in order to facilitate subscribers/ customers.

Here’s a review of the WorldCall EVDO Broadband Service for 3 months in Karachi, by Mohtashim of IT Tazee. His review is based on the 256kbps speed option.

A few snippets from his review:

Setup: Simple and fast. Since its USB, it self installs and starts to work.
Price : 3000 for the device, and 1200 and up for the service. Yes, home DSL is cheaper and faster, I agree but you do pay dearly for the mobility and to bypass KESC and PTCL all at once!
Speed: We got the speed promised consistently as long as we were in the Karachi metropolitan area.

Imran Zaheer added this comment from his own experience:

QoS varies greatly from area to area and time of day. The first 2 months (where I suppose user base was very low), I consistently used to get 80-140KB/sec (yes that’s a little above the rated speed limit). I suggest people considering this go with the 256 or 512 packages, and if you do a lot of inter city traveling, consider the PTCL EVDO option.

LIRNE Asia notes the efforts of PTA to convince the government that raising taxes will not result in more money coming in – the reverse is actually true as the Pakistan government got less revenue from the mobile market after tax increase.