State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Guest Post By Faisal Chohan, TED Fellow 2009, Co-Founder BrightSpyre.com. This is a  cross Post From Faisal’s blog.

TED Conferences are one of the best places to be, and sometimes it comes out to be a life time opportunity. On a journey of spreading ideas and going global TED Long Beach Conference ( TED 2009, The Great Unveiling) is followed by TED Global 2009 July 21-24, 2009 (The Substance of things not seen) in Oxford UK, and TED India (The Future Beckons) November 4-7, 2009.TED fellows program under the leadership of Tom Reilly is focused on getting together the world’s future leaders to get inspiration from current leaders of the world. The TED Fellows program is designed to bring together young world-changers and trailblazers who have shown unusual accomplishment and exceptional courage.

TED India’s focus is to get more and more candidates from Asia. So help spreading this word to as many brilliant doers in this region.Here is the full press release from TED. TED Fellows Program Accepting Applications for 100 TEDIndia FellowsOrganizers of the TED Conference has announced they would begin the search for 100 TEDIndia Fellows to participate in the TEDIndia Conference in Mysore, India, following upon the successful TED Fellows program launch at TED2009 this past February in Long Beach, California. The TEDIndia Fellows program will accept applications for fellowships from April 20, 2009 through June 15, 2009. The TEDIndia Fellows program is a part of the larger TED Fellows Program, a new international fellowship program designed to nurture great ideas and help them spread around the world.

This year, organizers will select 100 promising individuals from around the world to attend the very first TEDIndia Conference. At the end of the year, organizers will select 20 individuals from a pool of the TED, TEDGlobal, and TEDIndia Fellows to participate in an extended three-year Senior Fellowship, bringing them to six consecutive conferences. The principal goal of the program is to empower the Fellows to effectively communicate their work to the world.Benefits of the Fellowship include conference admission, round-trip transportation, housing and all meals. Fellows will also participate in a two-day pre-conference with the opportunity to present a short talk for consideration for TED.com, elite skills-building courses taught by world experts, social opportunities and surprise extras.

The TEDIndia Fellows program will have international representation with a distinctly South Asian majority, with approximately 75% of the Fellows representing the South Asian region, and 25% representing other regions of the world. South Asia is defined as including the countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. For the global pool, applications will also be sought from the other five target regions: Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, with consideration to the applicants from other countries.The program seeks remarkable thinkers and doers who have shown unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage, moral imagination and the potential to increase positive change in their respective fields. The program focuses on innovators in technology, entertainment, design, science, film, art, music, entrepreneurship and the NGO community, among other pursuits.

Applicants are generally between 21-40 years of age, though anyone over 18 and over 40 may apply. They must also be fluent in English; though moderate fluency will be accepted on a case-by-case basis. The program was inspired by the TEDAfrica 2007 conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in which 100 fellows participated in a first-of-its kind gathering that featured trailblazing, entrepreneurial individuals vested in creating change on the continent. The TEDAfrica fellows brought with them new perspectives, enormous energy, enthusiasm and ovation-generating talks. Propelled by their energy, TED decided to develop the full-scale TED Fellows program, which debuted at TED2009 in Long Beach, California.“TED2009 was a transformative experience for me, and several of my peers,” said Pragnya Alekal, TED2009 Fellow and now TEDIndia Fellows Coordinator. “For the first time, we were in a supportive community of enthusiastic innovators, all working to make the world better. And after only two months, so many new collaborative ventures and initiatives have come out of it.

Guest Post By Hemant Kumar

We have seen ringtones and wallpapers being the favourite downloadable content so far, but slowly this favouritism is accommodating other contents as well. The reason for this is manifold. Firstly, the handset capabilities are improving continuously. For e.g. most phones now are video enabled and users can download and watch videos, the ringtones have moved from simple monotone to the much preferred polyphonic ringtones. Phones are being dubbed as walkmans causing phones to range from cellular devices to music players. Secondly, the data charges are dropping while the mobile internet speed is increasing. These reasons provide a suitable environment for content downloads.

If on one hand we have the suitable environment aiding the content download industry, on the other hand we have the behaviour of the mobile users itself which is accelerating the growth. Mobile is moving from being a just a communication device to a mode of entertainment. Think of how mobile phones are used by people nowadays. Phones are extremely personal devices and people carry it on them all the time. They levels of engagement is also high where people are hooked to their phones. You can see people use it on a bus or train, while walking, in restaurants, parks, whether they are by themselves or with someone. In fact, it may be one of the devices which is considered as private as a person’s journal and you tend not to allow anyone else use your phone. Given this, people like to personalize their phones and make it depict their tastes and preferences with ringtones, ringback tones, wallpapers etc. Users like to stay updated to the latest trends like ringtones of songs topping the charts, wall papers of the latest movies, latest versions of games etc. This results in a constant need for new content as the demand is consistently high.

mKhoj, a leading ad network, were asked to categorize the contents downloaded in their network. Games, ringtones and wallpapers occupied the top 3 spots in terms of traffic. The gaming industry has always enjoyed a high demand and now users can play while on the move. This is the dream come true for any gamer. The user experience of the games are also constantly increasing with better graphics, more challenging games, games on the latest trends and of course multiplayer games that can be played via Bluetooth or internet. mKhoj experts also pointed out that ringtones and wallpapers are the best means to have your signature on the phone making the content download industry hit the ceiling.

The top 5 downloaded contents are:

1. Games
2. Ringtones
3. Wallpapers
4. Themes
5. Videos

Other than these major players, the other preferred content downloads are: