Mobilink Infinity has announced that they will no longer offer 256Kbps package. It means that you have to use the upgraded package and pay more. It is great for those who were looking to upgrade but not good for those who are not interested in paying more. The official announcement is below. Somehow the message is not very clear and some people may be surprised to see the extra charge after a couple of months. This is related to our rants about clear messages and billing issues.

We are excited to inform that your 256Kbps Mobilink Infinity Wi MAX account has been upgraded to 512Kbps under a special promotion!!

The Data allowance will be the same as of your 256Kbps package, but with double the speed and performance. You can experience blazing fast browsing, downloads and streaming with this upgrade and enjoy it at *Absolutely No Additional Cost for the Next Two Months*.

This promotion will give you a free speed upgrade for initial two months however, you will have to pay the 512Kbps package monthly charges according to the tariff from the third month onwards.

Here are the tariff details.

It looks like e-wallets and mobile commerce are on top of agenda for large telecom companies. China Mobile agreed to buy 20 percent of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank for 39.8 billion renminbi ($5.8 billion) to expand its electronic payment business.

China Mobile wouldn’t be alone in investing in financial firms. South Korea’s SK Telecom Co. last year agreed to buy a stake in Hana Financial Group Inc.’s credit-card unit for 400 billion won ($349 million), while Globe Telecom Inc. in the Philippines agreed to buy 40 percent of BPI-Globe BanKO Savings Bank in 2008. Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, last year bought a minority stake in Obopay, a supplier of mobile banking services in the U.S. and India.

China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou said that “this investment is an extension of our core telecom business. We see big growth potential in the profitability of the mobile financial business.”

Mr. Wang added that he expects the deal to boost the company’s earnings per share by 2% once completed.

I came across an article in New York Times on advances in shopping technologies. The effort to turn people’s mobile phones into information displays and ordering devices is on. Here’s a quick list of the technologies you could see on a cell phone soon:

• Scan and shop (various apps)
• Presence (IBM)
• Mobile Concierge (Cisco)
• Mobile Loyalty Cards

Shoppers will soon be able to stand outside the designer Norma Kamali’s boutique in Manhattan, point a phone at merchandise in the window and buy it — even late at night when the store is closed. How? By using technologies such as ScanLife which allows customers to scan bar codes on merchandise. Other apps allow users to do perform product search and price comparison through barcodes.

Ms. Kamali is at the forefront of a technological transformation coming to many of the nation’s retailers. They are determined to strengthen the link between their physical stores and the Web, and to use technology to make shopping easier for consumers and more lucrative for themselves.

Some supermarkets intend to offer real-time coupons while people shop. For example, a promotion for milk may be sent to a shopper’s mobile phone the moment her cart rolls into the dairy aisle. Drugstores will offer loyalty programs on cellphones, not on plastic cards. And specialty chains will allow shoppers to breeze through the aisles compiling a wedding registry, just by pointing at merchandise.

Privacy concerns are of course a barrier to all this. Not everyone would trust these apps and download them. So it remains to be seen how many shoppers will embrace such aggressive merchandising, which will generally require them to consent to being tracked electronically while in a store.

But many stores are betting they will go along. After all, people already wander city streets guided by maps on their mobile phones. Why shouldn’t the same technology lead them to the toilet paper in Aisle 3?

Hoping to use the technology as a competitive advantage, some big chains are reluctant to discuss their plans. The Sam’s Club division of Wal-Mart, Crate & Barrel, Kerr Drug of North Carolina and Disney stores are among the retailers that confirmed they were testing various mobile technology or planned to do so soon.

Other retailers have begun testing a product from I.B.M. called Presence. Shoppers who sign up can be detected as soon as they set foot in a store. That enables Presence to offer real-time mobile coupons. And tracking shoppers’ spending habits and browsing time in various departments can help the system figure out who might be moved to suddenly buy a discounted item.

Presence can also make product recommendations. If a shopper was buying cake mix, Presence might suggest buying the store’s private-label frosting and sprinkles, too.

“We’re also able to do predictive analytics — predict what we think you might want based on what we already know about you,” said Craig W. Stevenson, an I.B.M. executive who oversees Presence.

Cisco Systems, the supplier of networking equipment and services for the Internet, is also a leader in the field. The company’s Mobile Concierge system is capable of connecting customers’ smartphones to retailers’ wireless networks — so a shopper could type “Cheez Whiz” into a cellphone, then pinpoint its location in the store.

“We see the smartphone being used more and more in the shopping experience,” said Dick Cantwell, Cisco’s vice president for retail at Cisco’s Internet business solutions group

We are conducting a poll to collect consumer feedback on telecom billing errors, resolution process and improvements that can be made. As one example, PTA recently issued a show-cause notice to PTCL for, among other things, a high number of billing error (79 errors per 10,000 bills). Below are some statistics for reference.

These are from a survey conducted by PTA and PTCL in 2009 and represent the average of the nationwide results. We often hear that consumers of other telecom companies have similar issues with billing and we would like to get your opinion about this. We also want to know if the process of resolution of these issues is working well or not.

This WSJ article on Telcordia shows how telecom is also getting caught up in the intense politics of South Asia. Telcordia had helped with mobile number portability and now that has come under scrutiny by Indian government. Quite funny. We had heard the same kind of concerns about Telenor. Is this an isolated instance or does this mean more trouble for telecom vendors who are doing business in South Asia?

Telcordia Technologies Inc. sold its software to several cellphone companies in Pakistan a few years ago, just as it has done in 14 other countries. Now that fact is making life difficult for the U.S. company in Pakistan’s archrival, India. Telcordia makes back-end software for wireless and fixed-line networks.

Millions of Indian cellphone users are awaiting the chance to switch wireless providers while keeping the same phone number. Telcordia, which is based in Piscataway, N.J., was one of two companies the Indian government selected to provide crucial services to carriers in the transition to so-called number portability.

But in recent months, India’s Home Ministry has raised objections that partnering with Telcordia could compromise national security, effectively putting the company’s plans on hold.

The Indian ministry noted its concerns that Telcordia “has presence in Pakistan,” according to notes from a January meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the government body that reviews foreign investments.

Read more about this after the break.

The Home Ministry “has serious concerns over telecom security” and the potential for unauthorized eavesdropping if the foreign vendor is allowed to manage number portability, the notes say.

Anuj Kapur, Telcordia’s India country head, said in an emailed statement the company’s only business in Pakistan has been the sale of its standard “clearinghouse” software that helps cellphone companies coordinate user requests for transferring numbers to a new service.

India has allowed in other telecom companies that have operations in Pakistan. Norway’s Telenor ASA, for example, operates one of Pakistan’s largest wireless carriers and is the majority stakeholder in an Indian wireless start-up, Unitech Wireless. Given that, “It’s hard to make an argument that Telcordia shouldn’t be allowed in,” said Harit Shah, a telecom analyst at Angel Broking in Mumbai.

The Telcordia issue threatens to further delay number portability in India, which the government has already pushed back three months to a March 31 deadline because some carriers say they aren’t yet equipped to make the switch. Some analysts say the industry is simply dragging its feet. “There are operators with a vested interest to push this back,” said Kunal Bajaj, managing director of telecom consulting firm BDA in New Delhi. “They’ll find any excuse to delay it.”

Number portability would be a boon to India’s 525 million cellphone users, making it smoother for them to switch providers and demand better customer service from their existing carriers. But it could mean new costs for carriers.

Here’s a video report from Mobile World Congress 2010 at Barcelona, which talks about the  innovation and cool new gadgets.

Here are some of the recent favorites from TelecomPk.

• Qubee’s Future in Question
• Find Your Lost or Stolen BlackBerry
• Limited Time Offers
• Google Nexus One
• Return on 4G Investment?

Rohan Samarajiva of LIRNEAsia has published a post titled “Pakistan Competition Commission appears to have mobile telcos on the ropes“. The post describes how evidence emerged on price fixing for balance inquiries and steps taken by Competition Commission of Pakistan. The details of this case are quite interesting and offer many insights into the minds of telecom decision makers.

It started with something innocuous. Within a very short period of around a week all the mobile operators in Pakistan announced they would charge 10 Paise for balance inquiries. The Competition Commission of Pakistan naturally initiated an inquiry. The mobile operators said there was no price fixing and that this move was intended to reduce the overuse of this service.

But then someone turned up with copies of emails showing the existence of a CEO Forum and details on discussions of prices, not only for balance inquiries, but for other services as well. Having completed the preliminary inquiry the CCP has now issued formal show cause notices.

Wake up call to the region’s mobile operators. Competition is intense, we agree. But do not violate the law. Even if not all South and SE Asian countries have general competition law and agencies in place, many operator licenses include prohibitions against price fixing. What Pakistan is doing now, could well happen in other countries too.

Telecom companies have started using  Twitter and other social media platforms for effective customer service and brand promotion. The quality of how companies use these new media channels varies a lot. I wanted the readers to take a look at how customer service should be done - as shown by T-Mobile -  and the mistakes that Mobilink and Ufone are making.

I am sure you can spot many differences right away. Share yours in the comments and we will update the post with your input and our views.

PTCL is in the news as it reported earnings: a net profit of Rs. 5.354 billion for the half year ended on 31st December, 2009. This is a 13% growth compared to same period last year. At the same time, PTCL has withdrawn its high-speed Internet discount for students. In a recent press release, it announced that “PTCL is offering special 30% discount package for the students on 1 Mbps connection on high speed broadband services.” The previous connections of 2MBps and 4Mbps offered to students will be downgraded. To me, this business strategy seems odd. Why would you downgrade a popular package at a time when earnings are good?

Here are the PTCL highlights from 2009.

• During last year, PTCL acquired about 336,000 customers spread over 200 cities in Pakistan.
• Evo – the wireless Broadband based on 3G technology with nationwide roaming  expanded to all the major cities.
• Under the USF scheme, PTCL is extending voice and data services to the underserved and far-flung areas of Pakistan using satellite backhaul as well.
• For its Corporate clients, the Company has launched Enterprise DSL, I-Sentry (IP video monitoring and surveillance solution), managed services and also soft launched Tele-presence for the first time in Pakistan.
• Data Centers equipped with latest technologies are being established at Karachi and Lahore with the objective to provide data-hosting as well as disaster-recovery services to our valued corporate customers.
• Another initiative is the on-going project to equip over four thousand (4,000) schools with IT labs under the auspices of Government of Punjab.
• Residential customers promotions include: Free on-nets minutes for new connections, Double-up Unlimited Package with single pricing for voice and broadband services, Bundle deals in Lahore and Karachi and Regional Packages.