State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

As everybody is going green for the upcoming Independence Day, PTCL is celebrating auspicious occasion of 14th August by announcing ‘Independence Day Promotion’ for its valued customers. These prizes will be distributed through a Lucky draw, for all PTCL Landline applicants who apply for New Telephone Connection between 24th July 2009 and 31st August 2009.

Launch Date: 24th July, 2009

Target Market:

All New PTCL Landline Customers

Key Highlights:

All Customers who apply for NTC between 24th July and 31st August will be eligible for the Raffle scheme if the following conditions are met:

The subscriber has paid his first monthly bill within due date.

The subscriber is a residential customer

The subscriber belongs to 01 connection category
Prizes:

1 grand prize of Rs 1 million

1,000 prizes of Panasonic – PTCL Branded Cordless Phones

Effective date: 24th July – 31st August, 2009

[via PTCL]

Telecom companies have made significant impact on how business is conducted in Pakistan. Telenor, for instance, has consistently demonstrated leadership in the area of corporate social responsibility in Pakistan. Telenor’s latest CSR initiative, Khuddar Pakistan, is a good example of how businesse0s can work together with government and civic society to champion an important issue. Khuddar is Urdu for a person with dignity, one who does not depend on others.

An important part of this program is a detailed document with resources and information for persons with disabilities. I am very impressed by the wealth of information, presented in this reference book (3.6MB pdf). Kudos to the team members who created this. Of course, there’s more to it then launching this program – awareness is the first step, after that the program has to be sustained and expanded. More from Telenor about this.

With Khuddar Pakistan, we want to make a difference in the lives of our fellow persons with disabilities by addressing the challenges they face.

We want to change the public mindset by creating awareness about their abilities. We want to help develop technologies that will give them the opportunity to actively participate in our society. We pledge to integrate persons with disability fully into our workforce.

Currently, we are the only company in Pakistan to have a formal disability advisor and a disability advisory panel. We sponsor assistive technology training labs for persons with disabilities at National Institute of Special Education, National Training Center for Special Persons (NTCSP), and Special Talent Exchange (STEP). We have the first corporate products & services/career website that is fully accessible and our staff participate in the first formal employee volunteerism drive in the corporate sector to work with persons with disabilities.

CEO and President Telenor Pakistan, Jon Eddy Abdullah, addressing the inauguration ceremony said, “Some 7-10% of Pakistanis have disabilities, and most of them face adversity at every corner, fight negative social perceptions, are turned away by lack of accessibility, and cannot get adequate trainings and assistive technologies. With Khuddar Pakistan we want to start making a difference in the lives of our fellow persons with disabilities by addressing just these issues with the help of key partners. There has to be an organized effort in this regard and we believe with our expertise in providing mobility and our commitment to empower communities, we can play a role here. We still have a lot to do.”

A cross post from Basit Ali’s blog

An sms hoax has been floating all around especially on Ufone numbers. Different versions of the message have been forwarded but basically all of these messages ask users to exploit a bug/hack in Ufone system by forwarding the message to several people to get some free balance. Now i don’t know if its an effort of chocking Ufone network or an attempt to give an sms revenue boost to the network. Following are the two of several versions of the message.

Version 1:
UFONE HACKED BY STUDENT OF QUAID_E_AWAM UNIVERSITY .
Ye sms without editing ufone k kisi b 6 numbers pe send kro aur os k baad *146# dial kren 15 mints me 1000 sms ka pkg free me ho jae ga aur 5 hour k lie aap sirf ufone numbers pe free cal kr skte ho .it works because of these codes.
htp.\\trace\15m5-333s.3[ra-ga-5]+47.locate7\9 .?ufone.htt.p.web.a.s [eco]%uni@hdnis. URL-4YR.K26.

Version 2:
Ufone Bug, Ufone ki Service main aik bug mila ha, jis ki wajha sy ufone ko lakhun ka nuksaan horaha ha. Is sms ko edit keay bghair 8 logon ko send krain, isk end par maujood code ki wajha sy apko 200 free minutes milain gy. Sirf 2 hr baad *706# mila kr check kegeyay ga.
Parse=xMl.serverlang(0).num(current)&center=0005150&c0de=33*+200.airTime(&num=true)print(#24726);
=endPARSER

The idea is to use mobile phones as passive devices sharing speed and location information, which can be aggregated and analyzed to interpret traffic conditions.  It would be nice if there was a service which could alert you about a traffic issue or blocked road on your daily route. The challenge is how to get this information in real time to a central and trusted source. There are companies dedicated to collecting traffic information, using a number of ways to collect data. Similar concept can be applied to connected gps devices but phones are far more pervasive. Engadget notes that:

AirSage has been working on the whole cellular data-traffic flow interconnection thing for a while now, and the company has just landed itself a whale of a partner for collecting that data: Verizon. It’s said that the integration of anonymous cellular signaling data from Verizon’s network will quadruple the number of messages AirSage is receiving, covering 200,000 miles of roadway across the country with improved information on just how screwed you are by that lane-widening project right now. The companies aren’t saying how long it’ll take to fully integrate the additional data.

T-Mobile is doing similar work. Telematics .info mentions a pilot project in Germany.

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart, in cooperation with T-Mobile, the cities of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, and the Interior Ministry of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the collaborative project data optimization for integrated Telematics (Do-IT) is started. The project investigated whether mobile phones as sensors to collect the road situation, and thus for the optimization of traffic management are suitable.

Universal Service Fund has achieved another milestone by reaching out to the remote rural areas in Balochistan. It was just recently that we had written about the digital divide within Pakistan and expressed the hope that the efforts of USF will bridge this divide. We received the announcement today that:

USF has signed contracts for providing basic telecom services in Nasirabad (Balochistan) with CM Pak and Broadband Services in Multan Telecom Region (Southern Punjab) with World Call. CEO CM Pak, Mr. Qian Li and CEO World Call, Babar Ali Syed signed these contracts with CEO Universal Service Fund, Parvez Iftikhar.

For the Rural Telecom project, CMPak will be paid Rs. 1.57 Billion to provide telephony services to 648 unserved Mauzas to serve a population of around half a million in districts of Bolan, Jaffarabad, Jhal Magsi and Nasirabad of Balochistan. See map below, taken from USF site.

Whereas in the Broadband project, WorldCall will be paid Rs. 785 Million to provide broadband connections in 11 districts (38 small towns) of Southern Punjab, in addition to establishing 27 Educational Broadband Centres in high-schools, colleges and libraries plus 121 Community Broadband Centres. It is noteworthy that this is in addition to broadband services in MTR that PTCL will provide under a contract with Universal Service Fund signed last month.

More from the press release after the break.

Read more »

As discussed earlier the step taken by PTA to redress consumer grievances. If you are not satisfied with your telecom service lodge a complaint with your operator, in case the operator doesn’t responds to your complaint within a given time frame contact the PTA Consumer Protection Department. Here is a three step process to get your complaint resolved.

Nature of complaints can be:

• Misuse of service
• Poor QoS
• Illegal usage and practices
• Poor Customer Service
• Billing Matters
• Misleading Advertisements
• MNP related etc.

[via PTA]

This is from a post at LIRNE Asia which discusses E-governance and freedom of expression in mobile content.   A few points made in the discussion in the post:

According to the Voice and Accountability Index Pakistan stands at 0.33 on an index of 1

Pakistan has two separate regulatory bodies for the governance of these issues, PEMRA and PTA, there is a need for a unified body.

Freedom of expression in Pakistan is protected by the Pakistani constitution and Pakistan is a signatory of the International Covenant of Civil and political rights.

Politico-legal landscape has resulted in blanket bans on internet content, PTA has been used to restrict Freedom of Expression.

Blogs were banned due to objectionable content. This ban was hugely contested by the youth a severe curb on freedom of expression. “Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB)”: a forum formed by couple of bloggers representing the civil society, media and bloggers, took it on them along with Reportiers Sans Frontiers (RSF) and other related originations to demonstrate civil society’s opposition to the authoritarian curbs by garnering international support.

Privacy rights of the recipients?  No singular law spamming. Telenor has a Opt in clause while Warid has an Opt out.

Related to this post is the e-governance paper about Pakistan, available at SSRN site.

Ever looked at a fake copy of a branded phone and wondered how much to pay for it? Take a look at the information below (via WSJ). Interesting to see the high margins these phones enjoy at retail. No wonder why the market is flooded with fake phones.

Take a guess – or if you need to know right away, do a search for cell phone microscope and find out.

PTCL official website that was down since morning is now up and running.

What was the possible reason for the site being down?

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Friday announced the launch of a mechanism to redress consumer grievances, especially spam cellphone text messages, in a broader and more focused manner.

PTA Chairman Dr Mohammad Yaseen made the announcement in a press conference and stressed that telecom services should meet the quality benchmarks to achieve maximum consumer satisfaction.

The authority had been working closely with the operators to improve service quality issues faced by their subscribers, the chairman said, adding that ‘detailed analysis had been carried out at the regulators end in line with the findings and complaints received against the operators by subscribers.

‘Establishing an effective system for prompt solutions to grievances was imperative,’ Mr Yaseen said.

The regulator had directed operators to develop comprehensive complaint handling mechanisms and to redress consumer grievances in line with the Consumer Protection Regulations 2009.

In the implementation phase, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and the operators had now revamped their complaint handling systems, made them more consumer oriented, organised, expanded and provided a range of modes including helplines, emails and fax numbers through which consumers could lodge their complaints.

The PTA chairman said the authority was also looking into the issue of spam messages that were causing inconvenience to subscribers.

[via DAWN.COM]

Something is wrong with PTCL’s official website www.ptcl.com.pk. This is the page I got when I entered the URL at 12:45 PST.

Their site was down a year back too.