It has been another year of mixed results for PTCL but it is clearly getting on a stable track – Rs. 9 billion profit is not bad. Because of its breadth of coverage, it can offer some interesting services – for example see their latest Double Up package, which has been criticized by other ISPs as unfair. It would get really interesting if PTCL came up with a package offer which includes wireless (voice and/or data) as well. Ufone, its mobile phone arm has shown decent performance, though it could have done better.
In summary, anyone looking for a long term investment should consider PTCL.
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited announced profit-after-tax amounting to Rs9.151 billion for the year ended June 30, which was in line with many analysts’ expectations.
Earning per share (EPS) stood at Rs. 1.79. The previous year, the telecom had drifted into loss of Rs. 2.825 billion, translating into loss per share of Re0.55.
The board did not announce a final dividend; the company having already paid an interim cash dividend at Rs1.50 per share.
Given substantial cash holdings, some analysts were looking forward to a bit of more with the final accounts.
The revenue of PTCL for the year under review stood at Rs. 59 billion, which represented 11 per cent decline over the revenue of Rs66 billion earned in FY08.
The dwindling of fixed line subscriber base was thought to be the factor in declining revenue, but sector analysts said that increase in international and broad-band revenues might have prevented a greater fall.
A guest post by Ammar Faheem earlier discussed mobile banking and how it poses a challenge to traditional banking industry. According to a new study by Javelin Strategy & Research, mobile banking comes with new risk and opportunities in authentication for customers and can greatly help them if affordable, easy to use and effective.
In August and September 2009 Javelin polled 2,000 consumers to gauge their perceptions of mobile banking and corresponding authentication security methods.
It measured ease of use, effectiveness and high risk authentication and found that:
For ease of use: six out of ten consumers prefer simple authentication methods such as image recognition. Security questions came in close second with 59% ranking the method easy to use. In contrast, three in ten consumers ranked biometrics as easy to use.
For effectiveness: Simple security questions – or knowledge based authentication (KBA) – ranked highest in effectiveness by 65% of consumers.
For high risk authentication – Consumers ranked an additional security question (also KBA) as the preferred method of authentication with three in 10 trusting it as their method of choice.
“Mobile banking is a convenient new channel that is enjoying widespread adoption,” said James Van Dyke, president of Javelin. “While there are obviously new critical risks, this ‘always-on’ channel for monitoring finances can also manage risk across all other channels. A multi-layered approach to authentication provides the most effective means of mitigating fraud while improving upon the consumer experience.”
While mobile banking comes with risks, according to Javelin, mobile authentication can actually help mitigate the risk of fraud across all banking channels, from ATM to branch. Collectively, new account and existing account identity fraud adds up to $48 billion, with an average per-victim cost of nearly $550.
The top two most promising authentication technologies are mutual authentication and device recognition which provide substantial protection while offering ease of use, which raises the likelihood of adoption. Javelin ranked voice and vein pattern biometrics as least promising.
“As institutions look to incorporate mobile banking into their authentication strategies, most often it will be under a multichannel umbrella,” said Javelin Risk, Fraud and Security Analyst Robert Vamosi, author of the study. “The best authentication approach will leverage new and existing technologies that can cross channels as well mitigate new risks and take advantage of new capabilities afforded by the mobile handset.”
Javelin designated RSA and VeriSign best in class among the 15 authentication vendors analyzed. Tyfone and M-Com ranked best in class among the 13 mobile banking vendors analyzed for their overall cross-channel authentication capabilities.
Considering the popularity of Motor Sports amongst the youth, Warid’s Glow brand has scored points by sponsoring a racing event called Pakistan Racer Hunt. This is a smart campaign by Warid to attract attention, create buzz and engage their target audience: affluent youths. Click below to see a higher resolution ad.
Pakistan Racer Hunt is an event where teams from Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad will be competing with each other to win the Go-Kart race. People from the three cities will be short listed through a theory and practical test and then would compete for the Grand Finale to be held in Lahore. To participate in the event one needs to buy an Entry Pack worth Rs 2,999 (that will only be available at Warid Business Centres and at Espresso Cafes). GLOW is the main sponsor of the event whereas it is co-sponsored by Bank Alfallah.
Telenor has always focused on its brand’s presence whether its online or offline. To align their brand marketing with the growing trends, Telenor went on to launch their Weblounge Service first in the bloggers meet-up held in major cities in the second week of August. We had appreciated the initiative of Telenor Pakistan as it was the first of its kind to provided a platform for bloggers to interact and give their feedback on services being offered from Telenor. It was along this launch that Telenor Pakistan also announced a blogging competition for the interested bloggers. As is the case with new experiments, it takes some fine tuning to get to the objective.
The initial results of the blogging competition were received on 28th August, 18 days after the start of competition in which Telecompk.Net was ranked third. The email also stated that the competition will end in the last week of September.
During the Eid vacation, some bloggers discussed on the much awaited competition results on twitter and decided that the if Telenor fails to give the prize, the issue will be brought up on blogs.
Yesterday all the participating bloggers were informed that the competition has been extended for a month, now ending on 31st October and have also put a limit of 1000 referrers to qualify. However in order to encourage and appreciate the efforts of bloggers they are sending in gift hampers. Perhaps the low traffic during Ramadan and Eid could be the reason behind this.
Nevertheless, the change in competition rules has come as a surprise. But its not a big issue for those bloggers who blog with a purpose in mind. Prizes are nice but its more important to be a credible source of quality information. We at Telecompk.Net beleive that extending the date doesn’t mean a change in game plan. We think that this interesting experiment should be allowed to conclude in good faith and good spirits for all, not to be criticized with aggression like another breaking news blog did. Its always more important to talk about core issues rather than creating hype on non-issues.
Telecompk.Net has always provided a platform to share information. We welcome Telecom Pakistan to have their say with us.
Now that a week has passed since Eid, we can look back and see if this Eid was any different from the perspective of telecom traffic and service quality. If you go through the news, it would seem as if Eid is an event when the divide between public and the phone companies becomes more obvious and open. For example this piece from Daily Times is very critical of the mobile phone operators. I wonder if the situation on the ground was this bad and if so, are there good metrics available about this? To be fair, I think that the Public Relations departments of these companies should issue clear statements and engage the public about their point of view as well.
Majority of the customers reported that they had to made several attempts for calls particularly during Chand Raat to Eid Day because of the jammed network. The customers suffered unavailability of connectivity for domestic and internationals calls on Eid Day. Besides, cellular phone call packages after midnights were reported jammed and interrupted during Eid days.
Telecom analysts said that the network controls calls traffic run smoothly in normal days but they are overloaded during Eid as millions of customers make calls simultaneously. They added the flow of calls and SMS depends on the capacity and number of cellular sites, which varies in accordance with the density of their customers in particular areas. There are more than 95.54 million subscribers of various cellular phone companies registered in the country out of which more or less 60 million are estimated as active users. For coverage, there are more than 26,300 cellular sites of all five operators functioning in different metropolis, small cities and villages in the country.
Customers also reported that the balance upload service were not available on the retail outlets as the request failed to transfer and share balance among customers. Therefore, they had to buy scratch cards, which are comparatively costly for them.
On the topic of blocking certain packages, it quoted PTA officials as.
Millions of customers were deprived of greeting through lowest rates Short Messaging Services (SMS) as some operators has suspend their bundles package temporary from Chand Rat to Eid’ third day. They said that the operators suspension of the deals may be a violation of the regulations’ prescribed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) but their reputation were badly hurt in a highly competitive market.
PTA’s Telecom Consumer Protection Regulations, 2009, said operators may withdraw the provision of any service to consumers, provided such withdrawal is approved by the authority and thirty days prior notices is given to consumers. Operator shall clearly communicate the reasons for suspension/disconnection to the consumer along with the action required on the part of that consumer to avoid such suspension/disconnection, it further added. PTA, when contacted, said that it would review all these issues in order to chalk out strategies for the facilitation of the customers in the future.
About suspension of services, PTA will probe into matter and penalize the companies for violating the regulations, a high official said.
Out of curiosity I wanted to see if data usage on phones is going up or not. It is often assumed that smartphone users (Nokia, Blackberry and iPhone, for instance) consume lot more data than others. I use an iPhone for email, reading blogs (via rss reader) and for browsing the web when away from a PC. My data consumption averages about 200-250 MB per month. What about you?
Pakistan vs India cricket match is always a popular event to watch not only in these two countries but everywhere else cricket is played, understood and liked. I was also very excited about the match on Saturday but was also afraid of the possible power failures. It went great for the initial hours but when the match reached the climax at midnight, power company employees showed their dutifulness and switched the power off for an hour.
Now what?
Quickly I tried a few options. First of all, I tuned into a good old FM radio channel that was quick and convenient. At least I could get live score and updates. In addition, I had a few other options for live score updates, for example:
All of the above are text based cricket score tools and eventually were much slower than that of FM radio. I was still missing the TV as I knew that the power is not going to be available. Then I recalled a service that I tried several months ago. Yes, Mobilink TV. I simply directed my browser to MobilinkTV’swap site and launched the sports channel on my phone. Within a few seconds I could watch the match live. That was the best thing that happened to me in several days :)
It was an amazing experience. I watched the match for almost 45 minutes. But I must warn and inform you about a few facts here:
The service is very expensive but at that time, it was worth it. It costs Rs. 6/megabyte plus tax. According to a careful calculation, it must have costed me around Rs. 100 or more for these 45 minutes. (I’ll post the exact amount once I get my bill)
The TV transmission sound was crystal clear but you need external speakers for better experience.
The quality of video for a 3 inch screen was moderate. I could hardy read the score at the bottom of the screen but could clearly understand what’s going on in the game.
Like any other internet video solution, there were points when video got stuck for data buffering. May be a few seconds pause every couple of minutes.
There was around 25 seconds delay as compared to normal TV or radio’s live coverage.
And yes, there is a specific set of compatible handsets that runs this service. Not all smart phones are compatible. Even the BlackBerries are not :(
Last but not least, there is a separate access-point setup needed to access these TV streams. Make sure to get the settings by calling the helpline.
In short it was fun to watch cricket without electricity. Lets see how much fun it will be to pay for it :)
The shift in power for handsets has been going on for about 2 years now and trends have strated emerging, supported by data. Here’s an interesting piece, via GigaOM
If you want to know why Nokia is in trouble, you need to look no further than its market share declines during the second quarter of 2009 in the company’s home market of Western Europe. This region accounts for a majority of its high-end phone sales. During the quarter, Nokia handset sales were down 19 percent (year-over-year), according to market research firm IDC, to about 15.3 million units. Overall handset sales for the quarter were down 6 percent and will be down a total of 10 percent for 2009, IDC says.
This data exposes Nokia’s Achilles heel. The reason why Nokia is suffering is because it doesn’t have a hit device to address the fast-growing smartphone market. Smartphone sales were up 25 percent to 8.8 million units compared to a year ago, IDC says. That’s about 1.75 million smartphones for the quarter. Guess who’s winning sales in the smartphone category? Apple, which sold about 1.4 million iPhones, and RIM, which sold 1.2 million BlackBerrys during the quarter.
Updated: I asked IDC to share shed some more light on the sales of the smartphone sector for the second quarter of 2009 and they emailed with this nugget of information:
Nokia 57.5%
Apple 15.5%
Research in Motion 13.2%
HTC 8.1%
Samsung 3.0%
What we’re seeing is a complete upheaval in the handset market. We’re seeing two traditional powerhouses — Nokia and Sony Ericsson — be upended by North American and Asian competitors, some of them newcomers to the market. These two companies will continue to lose market share for a couple of reasons: Carriers like Vodafone are launching their own smartphone devices and most importantly, Google’s Android-based devices made by companies such as Motorola and HTC are about to hit the market in large numbers in 2010.
Verizon Wireless is planning to light up its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) nationwide network next year in one fell swoop rather than deploying it in a traditional market-by-market rollout, according to Tony Melone, the firm’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.
In the interview, in the wake of his talk on Verizon Wireless’ LTE project this week at the 2009 PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show, Melone described the move to LTE from Verizon’s existing CDMA EV-DO network as an “overlay” and not a “switchover.” He added that the LTE network is able to use much of the existing infrastructure of the CDMA network including towers and backhaul gear.
Melone also discussed what consumers can expect from the new LTE network. “You will need new devices to take [full] advantage of LTE,” he said. “But there won’t be a need to force migrate” The carrier’s CTO explained that existing Verizon Wireless users will be able to continue to use their current devices and handsets after LTE is commercially launched.
LTE will enable traditional-type handsets and PDAs, but also some non-traditional devices like the IREX Technologies e-book reader, GM’s OnStar auto security solution, and even court-ordered electronic bracelets. Melone noted that Verizon has certified more than 55 devices to operate on its 3G network and they will be available also for use with the LTE network. Most of them are machine-to-machine (M2M) units.
The company, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications (55%) and Vodafone Group (45%), has launched trial sites in suburban Boston and suburban Seattle. The Verizon LTE Innovation Center in suburban Boston is nearly completed, Melone added.
In his PCIA talk this week, Melone sought to scotch rumors that his firm’s LTE rollout is falling behind schedule. In the interview, he maintained that deployment is on schedule. The firm, however, hasn’t yet given specific dates on its nationwide deployment, but it has pledged it will happen in 2010 in 25 to 30 markets. The company will seek to have the service available for some 100 million POPs (points of presence) in 2010 and continue to deploy the network over the next two and three years.
Melone said Verizon’s Developer Community and its V CAST Apps will launch by the end of the year, enabling developers to take advantage of the launch to bring their own products and services to market.
“We can build all the bells and whistles and make lots of bold claims,” said Melone, “but none of it will matter if the network — and all of the underlying infrastructure that supports the network — isn’t fundamentally reliable. There will be no substitute for good old-fashioned engineering. Reliability built in at the start based on rigid engineering standards and a disciplined approach year-after-year will continue to be our mantra.”
Now that economy in some countries seems to be stabilizing, there is a new push to sell. In this picture, HP is following the trend which was once used by Nokia: send buses to rural areas to cultivate buyers. This may work in China where buying power is rising but I doubt if it will be useful in other countries. But if you are going to send a bus, then why not pack it with all kinds of electronics and may be a window for customer service!
We have been discussing about Google Maps. Here is intro about Maps on Nokia’s Ovi.
Whether you are exploring a city on foot, hitting the road driving, planning a trip or just want to get the best out of a new destination, Ovi Maps is always at your fingertips on your mobile and your PC/Mac.
Now it’s more fun than ever! You’re only one touch away from your favourite content and services – easily find your position and all the places you’re looking for, save them as your favorites and get to them.
Maps.ovi.com extends your Ovi Maps experiences from mobile to the web on PC/Mac and allows you to:
Find and explore places near your location or around the world, relevant to you,
Create and pre-plan routes online,• Save places and routes into your Collections,
And synchronize them with Maps on your mobile over-the-air.
It is supported by the following browsers:
- Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 and Firefox 3 and 3.5 on Windows XP/Vista
Yari Call an innovation from ZONG, allows ZONG subscribers the ease of calling even when they are out of balance or have insufficient balance.
Subscribers have the option of making whom they’re calling pay 100% charges by dialing 11 before the desired number..
When 11 is dialed before the desired number, complete call charges will be deducted from the recipient. For example if you are party A and you dial Party B’s number preceded with 11, then party B will pay complete charges for the call.
It is free of charge, easy to use and provides instant communication between the two parties but can be misused. Its still unclear if the party B knows before receiving the call that it will be charged for it. The website doesn’t have any information on this, it simply says dial 800 to manage your Yari Calls.
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