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!

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.

This event (pdf brochure available here) is taking place in India. Parvez Iftikhar, CEO Of Universal Services Fund of Pakistan is speaking about the progress of USF in Pakistan. I hope the  proceeding summaries (or better yet details) will be posted as it should be interesting for many.

The topics covered in this conference include:

• How can governments best support the creation of self-sustaining rural connectivity initiatives that benefit local people?
• Step-by-step practical guidance on overcoming the most pressing technical challenges
• Developing a world-class telecentre rural development programme
• Progress on delivering the promise of the United Services Obligation Fund
• Realising the benefits of greater rural connectivity though the delivery of E-services
• Mapping the future need for connectivity: Identifying choke points in the delivery network
• Training and empowering rural populations to make full use of the potential inherent in greater connectivity

During the many years of telecom industry’s growth, PTA has never been able to clearly define a reasonable VOIP policy. Recently PTA asked ISPs to detect and monitor traffic for voice over internet protocol and report any illegal usage. The Internet Services Providers of Pakistan (ISPAK) has taken a position against PTA directives asking them to set up expensive systems for the detection and monitoring of illegal voices traffic available unlimited on internet. Daily Times reports:

ISPAK Convener Wahaj us Siraj said PTA has invested a huge amount of operators’ contribution for installation of such a facility and this matter has to be tackled by PTA itself instead of passing on additional burden on ISPs. He said the ISPs could install the VoIP monitoring and mitigating facility if PTA provides funding for such a facility as the industry is already in debt due to selling below the costs and anti competitive practices. There are more than 50 ISPs operating across the country. As per policy, they contributed 0.5 percent of their revenue to Universal Service Fund (USF); 0.1 percent on the account of Research and Development and hundreds of thousands of fee charges for renewal of licences. ISPs cannot take any action against any customer doing illegal VoIP as they are lacking statutory powers to do so, he said and added that if PTA informs of illegal activity done by any customer to the concerned ISP, the ISPs’ action can only be limited to locking that customer’s account and providing customer details to PTA.

ISPs also termed PTA’s action of blocking the IP addresses on internet gateways without any prior notification and evidence as insufficient. They said they had been suffering badly, which has been brought to the notice many times in recent past to the regulator.

PTA has its automated blocking of IP addresses that carry illegal voice traffic that is termination and/or origination of voice packets in a bid to check grey traffic flowing into the country

On the other hand, Chairman PTA Dr Muhammad Yaseen told Daily Times that setting up of VoIP system is not a rocket science that could not be done by ISPs without the assistance of authority.

They only need to install software on their network to block illegal traffic of voices, which they are reluctant to do, he said adding that there are scores of culprits violating authority’s law under the very nose of ISPs. Dr Yaseen added that the authority has warned all the ISPs again and it has decided to conduct massive operation against all the illegal traffic users as per prescribed laws. He further said the ISPs should cooperate with the authority to stop illegal practices instead of supporting users’ violating watchdog’s laws.

PTA announced publicly that all (registered) call centres should provide their IP addresses to PSEB to make sure that their voice traffic is not blocked. Since the inception of technical facility in May 2008 at the PTA, the IP addresses found to be involved in illegal activities were being blocked manually and in the process, over 14 million minutes (worth around Rs 100 million) have been saved on monthly basis. Now these would be automatically blocked if any IP, not authorised to carry voice is found doing so. Under the current policy, only LDIs and international call centres are authorised to carry voice across national boundaries.

For Rs.2000 per month you can have blazing fast Internet on the go from PTCL EVO service. There’s a one time cost of Rs 6000 (USB) or Rs 4000 (PCMCIA card) . If you have a land line you pay the broadband charges with the land line bill, otherwise pay at PTCL One Stop Shops or Customer Service Centers. Limited availability for the broadband speeds - Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi - for now. But the lower speed CDMA version is available in other areas. Here’s what PTCL says:

You can use this service in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi & Mirpur for broadband while traveling. Your Evdo automatically switches to 1 X in non Evdo Coverage areas. Which means you can also use internet everywhere in Pakistan where there is Vfone 1900MHz network. Please note that in non Evdo coverage areas your internet will be connected on lower speed (153Kbps). PTCL provides a very large coverage area where you can stay connected.

For more information including caveats and support for your operating system, look at the main EVO service page and the FAQ page. As usual the service has been getting reviews ranging from great to average. But overall I think PTCL has a winner with EVO, if they can sustain the performance and service.

Here’s a teaser from the review by TechLahore.

I got a sleek looking, black EV-DO wireless USB dongle with an extensible antenna, that happens to go perfectly with my T60. The dongle has a built USB storage, so all I had to do was plug it in and the setup program started… from the dongle itself! Pretty cool. It took me about 5 minutes to run through the install, and boom! I was in business. My first stop was google.com, which loaded instantly. I could already see the difference in performance but I decided to measure it a little more objectively. Speedtest.net is always handy for that.

Guest Post By Phil Cruver

This is a continuation from Collaborative Learning in Paksitan Part 1 which introduced the concept of collaborative learning using enhanced video technologies.

Educators can also provide students with links to their lectures and assignments to tag as a class project. With this technology they can tag “chapters” and “topics” within the media file with a descriptive text for each tag. Additionally, all tags can be exported and distributed as a blog.

Once students tag a portion of a video or locate a tagged section of a video that is relevant to what they wish to learn, they may want to share the link with others. They can embed this as a deep link on their website, blog, or even in an email message. When other students click on the deep link, they will be taken not to the beginning of the video but to that precise section within the video.

Rather than conducting a search for keywords or tags that describe an entire video, students can conduct deep searches for tags that describe specific sections within a video and then immediately jump to that precise portion of the video clip. This saves time and facilitates education because students don’t have to watch a five-minute video to find a five-second nugget of information they need to understand.

How do these deep technologies specifically enhance learning?

• They increase the granularity of indexed media, allowing specific parts of video lectures to be more easily remixed, linked, and reused.
• They engage students to co-create content via annotation of lectures.
• They make media as an instructional tool more efficient since reading or reviewing streaming video is more time consuming than print media.

Also, these deep technologies enhance the educational content. The more the commenting and annotating, the more valuable the learning asset becomes as the wisdom of numerous and diverse interested parties add layers of collective intelligence to the video. Furthermore, specific moments of time within these videos can be instantaneously identified and retrieved with the Learning 2.0 Platform search engine.

Consider the opportunity for enhancing the quality of education in Pakistan by harnessing thousands of video lectures produced by the top teachers throughout the country. This digital archive could be searched as indexed meta data by key words within the annotations. Not only would this video library compliment and extend traditional learning but it would also scale giving millions of students access to a quality education.

Hopefully, Learning 2.0 will be adopted in Pakistan as a complimentary component to the upcoming national curriculum, which would help foster a new culture of learning. It would be a positive step towards educating its students with the new literacy they will require for competing in the flat world global economy they inhabit.

Guest Post By Phil Cruver

The technological evolution of Web 2.0 tools has produced a global platform that empowers the collective wisdom and intelligence of the crowd. Powerful arrays of technologies are emerging as ecosystems for extending, enhancing and enabling learning in an accelerated mode.

Deemed Learning 2.0, these online collaborative, interactive, and just-in-time information delivery technologies are encroaching on mainstream education in developed economies. These new and innovative technologies are not intended as a replacement for traditional education, but rather as an extension for learning in deep and powerful ways.

Tagging, the practice of attaching a descriptive word or phrase to a piece of online content for the purpose of linking it to other related digital media, is a well-known web phenomenon. Students searching for those tags can retrieve that specific and relevant content; thus, facilitating just-in-time learning and creating new possibilities for creative expression.

The Learning 2.0 Platform for Teachers and Students in Pakistan has introduced a new technology that provides the capability to transcend the limitations of simple tagging for describing an entire chunk of rich media. This next generation of tagging and its derivative progeny – linking and searching – allows the creation of direct links to specific parts within a larger selection of media. By indexing metadata, which enables tagging specific sections, you get deeper data information with the descriptor “deep tagging”.

Consider the possibilities for just-in-time learning: educators record their multi-hour lectures with a simple webcam, tag and upload them to the Learning 2.0 Platform as small interactive chunks. Students can repeatedly review the relevant information without enduring the entire session. Deep tagging metadata allows them to jump instantly to that specific section within the video for the information they need to learn.

The above image illustrates how deep tagging enhances collaborative learning. Abdul Aziz Bhatti, Principal at the Federal Government Model School for Boys G-0/4 in Islamabad was videotaped giving a lecture about Chemistry. Students tag the video while watching and their tags are indexed and made available to all who subsequently watch the presentation. Students can also comment upon their peers’ tags and all comments are emailed to the teacher for response and interaction.

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.

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.

It used to be that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and DSL operators had to buy Internet bandwidth from PTCL. For the last 2 years this has been a matter of contention whereby ISPs wanted the option to buy from other providers (such as TWA) who have entered the telecom backbone bandwidth market. As reported by The News:

The PTA, after a series of negotiations, has finally issued the minutes of the meeting held between the ISPAK (Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan) and the PTCL on 5th May 2009 in which it was decided that the ISPs will be free to buy Internet bandwidth from third party operators and would be allowed to link their optical fibre cable to one PTCL exchange per city. The PTA has also decided that the PTCL will not increase charges of its leased circuits used by the DSL operators for inter-exchange bandwidth only for the next year.

The PTA has reserved a judgment on settling the DSL wholesale and retail prices of the PTCL and committed to resolve this long outstanding issue within a month. Pakistan has come a long way from the early days of Internet in 1990s with only one submarine cable connecting the country with rest of the world. The country today has three submarine cables linking Karachi with Southeast Asia, Europe and North America named as SWM3, SMW4 and TWA, first two with the PTCL and the third with a private operator. The total Internet bandwidth to the country stands at around 18 gigabytes, growing at around 45% every year for the last three years.

CONNECT Conference website has detailed information including program details in pdf. It would be great if any attendee of this conference can share their experiences with blog readers. PTA Chairman is keynote speaker. Other speakers and topics include PTCL EVP Zaman Gulzar (Managed Services), Wateen CEO Tariq Malik (Wireless Broadband), Mutlinet COO Arif Hussain (IT Business Environment), Motorola country manager Rao Amir (Digital Divide). From the IT side, PSEB MD Talib Baloch, P@sha President Jehan Ara (I hope she will twitter from the live event) and Microsoft country manager Kamal Ahmed are among the speakers. Konnect Holden is sponsoring the event.

CONNECT has established itself as an exclusive B2B event of ICT industry keeping in view the growing needs of IT and Telecom sector. CONNECT 2009 will reinforce its position as a unique opportunity for its participants to display and demonstrate wide array of latest technologies and business solutions to maximise market presence, establish new contacts and strengthen existing businesses in a highly interactive environment.

In the first funding of its type, Universal Service Fund of Pakistan (USF) provided contracts worth Rs. 1.4 Billion in total, for providing Broadband Services in the un-served urban areas of Faisalabad Telecom Region (FTR). PTCL and Wateen Telecom won this round of contracts: PTCL will provide 72,500 broadband connections and Wateen Telecom will provide 16,500 connections. The  Faisalabad telecom region comprises of districts of Faisalabad, Jhang, Sargodha, Toba Tek Singh, Khushab, Bhakkar and Mianwali, excluding the served city of Faisalabad.

Readers of this blog may recall the earlier posts that we did to highlight and appreciate the work by USF and its leadership. Universal Service Fund (USF) is made up of contributions by telecom service providers of Pakistan. In the last decade, Pakistan has made impressive progress in providing voice telephony services crossing 60% tele-density, but broadband proliferation in the country is still very low and there are less than 300,000 broadband connections in the country. Furthermore, almost all these connections are concentrated in around 15 big cities of the country. Universal Service Fund (USF) is working to bridge that gap.

USF has ambitious and comprehensive plans to improve lives through broadband and connectivity. Read more information from the USF press release:

CEO of USF, Parvez Iftikhar, informed that FTR, has 56 towns and cities of various sizes with numerous potential broadband users like, hospitals, distance learning centers of Open University, Banks, NADRA centers/kiosks, Government Offices, Libraries, Courts, Industries and various other institutions, in addition to a population of more than 3 Million that could benefit. He further informed that a major highlight of this project will be the establishment of more than 250 Educational Broadband Centres in all the High-Schools and Colleges in these towns and cities, besides more than 100 Community Broadband Centres will be set up which will provide Broadband to those who cannot afford their own computers. He acknowledged the tremendous cooperation, help and support of the Ministry of IT and PTA, without which this landmark could not be achieved.

CEO USF also informed that bids for the next three similar projects have already been called through Press and Websites for the areas around Multan, Hyderabad and Mansehra. These will be followed by more projects till the whole country is covered. Moreover, bids for three more Projects of Basic Rural Telecom and two of Optic Fiber expansion in Baluchistan are also awaited.