State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Good development. PTA has proposed a few actions for dealing with spam. This includes spams SMS, emails and unwanted calls. See the proposal here or get it from PTA website. I doubt that a fine of 300 Rs will discourage professional spammers. Legitimate companies should start working on their opt-in lists.

It is proposed that a do not call register (DNC) may be maintained by telecom operators. The DNC Register will be a database having the list of all telephone numbers of the subscribers who do not want to receive unsolicited calls. After the establishment of DNC register a subscriber who does not wish to receive Unsolicited calls, can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider to be included in the DNC.

Operator shall upload the number to the DNC within 45 days of receipt. The Telemarketer will have to verify their calling mobile numbers list with the DNC register before making a call. An amount of Rs 300/- per call/message should be prescribed to discourage telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered in Do Not Call list. The defaulter telemarketer will face legal action.The impact of imposing a higher charge for calls and messages which have a commercial purpose attached to them will to some extent ensure that only legitimate calls are made i.e calls to recipients who do not have any problem with attending commercial calls.

Awareness is the key to fighting the spam problem. There are a number of channels listed by PTA but surprisingly blogs and other new media is not mentioned.

The Authority puts forward a media campaign check list which shall be followed by the Authority in collaboration with operators to create spam awareness:
  a) Public awareness activities to target users first and foremost, but also large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, direct marketers and online operators.
  b) General awareness activities to be posted on the Web or other media such as television, newspapers and magazines. Brochures may be distributed in schools, made available on all operators’ websites, and also distributed as a leaflet in IT magazines. Educational cartoons about spam, unsolicited and obnoxious calls controlling and reporting and online security broadcast.

The telecom honeymoon in Pakistan which lasted about 5 years (2002-2007) allowed Pakistani consumers to leapfrog over older landline based infrastructure and get cheap and quick access to modern telecommunication technology. The investors, telecom businesses and Pakistani treasury - all made good money and it was a win-win situation. It seems that the golden period for Pakistan telecom is over. The spike in teledensity and corresponding load on the new infrastructure is causing a number of service issues. To add fuel to fire the telecom rates for calls to Pakistan and within Pakistan have started rising, causing a lot of concerns. Consider the following points (follow links for details) from the last few months:

• Rise in local call charges by PTCL
• Calls to Pakistan made more expensive
• PTCL forces Pakistan package on its customers
• Deceptive advertisements by Mobile Companies
• Customer service calls are not free any more
• Telecom consumer protection laws still in draft

Some people hold the view that given the tremendous progress made, complaining about telecom situation in Pakistan is not justified. Yes, there have been great advances made but if we do not fix the structural issues early on, we will lose much of that progress. Left unchecked we may even regress to a point where there’s plenty of competition but consumers end up without the services they deserve at a fair price. Broadband is an appropriate example … Pakistani public has been tormented with poor service and caps on the usage. 

I believe that with the right regulatory measures, consumer protection laws and a code of ethics we can keep the telecom sector on the right track. 

I am glad to share the announcement of a new social initiative around Corporate Social Responsibility:

SocialBridges.Org - Seeking corporate social leadership in Pakistan.

This is a sign that citizen journalism and blogging is taking off in Pakistan. The topics and content of the SocialBridges will appeal to the growing consumer and commercial segment which needs a strong voice. There are some great insights there with a high-profile set of authors. I look forward to some thought-provoking stories there. See this announcement from Green & White.

Of course Telecom sector in Pakistan has been a major force behind corporate involvement in society. Consider the recent presentation by Zouhair Khaliq, CEO of Mobilink at TeleCON 2008 event in Karachi. The title of his presentation was Mobilizing Social Change and he talked about the recent launch of Mobilink Foundation. Get the full presentation in pdf: Mobilink presentation: Mobilizing Social Change.

Tee Emm was not impressed by the corporate brochure readout by Zouhair. However Bilal Mughal thought that there were positive aspects in Zouhair’s presentation. He writes this at Telecom Grid Pakistan:

Industry revenues are based on these mainstream factors and eliminating poverty is the heartbeat of all the problem whether it comes to you in the form of purchasing power or uplifitng the life trends from one consumer sect to another (higher). These things grow to be a central part of your company plans especially in our GDP environment and rotating them around different conferences provides with the direction to other participants to target the source issue of the market because at the end of the day if I sell dialup connection I would not want to sell at 2Rs if I’m selling at 5 today and you can only do that by increasing the consumer power at various levels and keeping it stable.

Over the past 2 years, TelecomPk.Net has offered many reviews and commentary about PTCL. This post gives a summary of the stories written about PTCL with a time line view. A quick look shows that the telecom consumers of Pakistan have been engaged in various forms of struggle with the privatised face of PTCL. The way PTCL handled the most recent rate increase of local calls (from 0.4 Rs per minute to 1 Rs per min) is indicative of its attitude towards consumers. I wish that I could PTCL the benefit of doubt but its too late for that.

Perhaps it is time to re-write the PTCL mission statement to omit customer satisfaction.

To be the leading Information and Communication Technology Service Provider in the region by achieving customer satisfaction and maximizing shareholders’ value.

In case you missed the past stroies, here is a list of the highlights. (All PTCL posts can be found here)

2006 - Broadband Tarrifs: PTA vs PTCL in court
- Battle of Bandwidth Tarrifs
- Ptcl vs PTA

2007 - ISPs vs PTCL, Profit Falls, Service Issues, Lower DSL Rates, Pakistan Package Forced On Consumers
* Pakistan ISPs Against Ptcl
* PTCL Net down by 25%
* Performance Review
* Lower Broadband Rates from Ptcl
* Service Issues Continue
* Pakistan Package Controversy

2008 - PTA reprimands PTCL, Local call rates changed quietly, Pakistan package modified
+ PTA issues directive against PTCL after public uproar
+ Ptcl Packages rips off consumers

The tariff table below is taken from the annual telecommunications report by PTA. Well, PTCL has already made this out-of-date with their change in lcoal call duration, down from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Any other corrections needed here?

Reality Mining is a process which mines various machine-sensed data which could be used predict human behavior. In case of cell phones, it has been used to provide a uniquely rich record of people’s locations, actions, social behavior, and even social roles. The research at MIT is sponsored by Nokia.

This is one of those stories which may seem to be ’so far out there’ but it has caused many to raise concerns. See the views from Nicholas Carr’s RoughType blog on reality mining.  Do you know for sure that your call data is secure? My concern is that for a variety of reasons, data from emerging telecom markets is susceptible to abuse and reality mining presents one of ways to make use of this data. The privacy laws in Pakistan and other developing countries are so weak (if there are any) that its only a matter of time before a problem is reported.

Here’s more via Business Week:

Nathan Eagle, a research scientist at the MIT Design Laboratory, is currently working with a database that holds an entire month’s worth calling data for a whole European country, though he won’t say which one. Scrubbed of all information that might be used to identify people, the data set contains information on 250 million phones and some 12 billion phone calls.

Wireless companies could use the information to help keep customers from switching to a rival—a strategic must in a region where most of the population already has a cell phone and “new” customers are scarce. Eagle mines the data for a range of information, such as identifying so-called influencers, who use their phone the most. Not only are these subscribers valuable because they use their phone a lot, but they’re also more likely to influence other people’s service and product purchases—and to take customers with them when they switch. “If someone who makes a lot of calls walks away, there’s a higher potential that they’ll take more people along with them,” Eagle says.

Read more »

The draft of the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008 states the rights of consumers, among other items. Many industry watchdogs have observed instances where these rights are in violation (for instance, see the warning issued to PTCL). What are the consequences for telecommunication companies if they don’t comply with these regulations?

Are the consequences so minor that telecom companies can shrug it off and keep doing the same thing? It needs to be significant enough that it provide motivation for compliance for telecom companies.

There’s one thing PTA can improve easily and it will make a big difference. The Consumer Alerts page on PTA web site is not good enough. It does not have archives of past alerts, is maintained on adhoc basis, is not user friendly and is probably not easy to find. If that was not enough the url keeps changing! It was www.pta.gov.pk/calerts.htm a while ago and now it is www.pta.gov.pk/Ref.htm.

Please make it easy to access the alerts from your home page, make it a part of your content management system and ask PTCL to provide a link to these alerts from their website.

Excerpt Of Consumer Rights From the Proposed Consumer Protection Regulation

• to have clear and easy-to-understand descriptions of the services for which they are paying.
• to know exact costs for all services prior to purchase, clearly expressed in local currency, without the confusion of moving, scrolling or otherwise difficult-to-read text;
• to know in advance of any price changes, associated terms including service contracts and the governing provisions of licensed telecommunication services;

As I have written before the consumer protection regulation is a good start but we need to see it implemented soon. And while we are on the topic, can you fix the 0800-55055 number for complaints?

This is bad news for Pakistanis abroad: they will pay considerably more for calling Pakistan starting May 1. See the news item from Dawn. It seems to me that we are regressing in terms of policy making. Who benefits from this? PTA and long distance operators. What about consumers? Well, a lot of consumers and industry experts are upset and are taking various actions such as expressing their concerns through various offline and online channels (see this petition). One thing is certain: the grey telephony market will flourish because of this. Expect more noise around this in the coming days. I am not looking forward to my next bill for international calls!

Salman Ansari (former CEO of Paktel) has posted interesting predictions at various online forums. Here’s an excerpt:

Quality of calls of inbound calls specially from the US will become terrible (cellular terminations) as most inbound terminations will come in via low cost grey market – biggest culprits will be the biggest carriers (AT&T, Bell Canada, etc).

Wasim Baig summarized his views about this change at TGP:

Pros:
1. LDIs get a higher rate, higher margin
2. APC contribution increases
3. Origination increases
4. Balance of trade in PK’s favor

Cons:
1. Grey market increases
2. LDI may increase origination rates as well
3. Yet more regulation! PTA stays relevant to pricing ..
4. Market pricing takes a back seat

Here’s more from Dawn article.

“The PTA, in fact, has addressed the demand of local operators, who have been pleading for increase in such rates, as it would not affect the local consumers of the facility,” said the source. “But it would naturally increase the cost of calling to Pakistan from outside”.

Read more »

Consumers in Pakistan are faced with a variety of challenges with few avenues to resolve their issues. For telecom customers PTA is the regulatory body responsible for consumer protection. PTA has been working to step up its efforts and it has introduced a consumer rights ordinance.

There is another channel as well which is less well known. This is the Punjab Consumer Protection Council (PCPC), based in Lahore. A recent article on Consumer rights trends from the director of PCPC was published here. This post introduces readers to the diligent work of Punjab Consumer Protection Council in more detail.

PCPC has been working proactively to gather and analyze data about consumer issues and to take concrete steps to resolve them. Here are a few excerpts from the work of PCPC (reproduced by permission) which highlights various problems and issues with telecom industry. For further information or to file a complaint please contact PCPC Headquarters Office, 135-J Model Town, Lahore, Ph # 042-5857927, 5855471.

Charges usually unknown to consumers

• Paktel to Paktel calls are charged on per second basis.

• Warid to Warid calls are charged on 30 sec duration.

• ^Telenor to Telenor airtime charges for 2nd min onwards Rs. 1.67 per min, Telenor to other networks 2nd min onwards Rs. 2.82 per min (including 15% GST).

• Off-peak Time: Ufone & Warid 10 pm to 7 am, Paktel 10pm to 7am.

• 10% Advance Tax is deducted from the purchase value upon Card Activation on all Operators with the exception of Warid Telecom.

A few other Issues

• No Customer Charter
• No Standard Contract
• Falling QoS

This pie chart illustrates the common service quality issues faced by consumer of telecom. This chart is based on a questionnaire-based survey conducted by PCPC itself containing the sample size equal to 100 telecom users relating to different segments of the society.

It looks like the Telenor legal department had to work late night to write the disclaimers (below) about their new service TeleDoctor. Telenor, we expect you to show some responsibility on your part when it comes to health matters. Please think twice before making grand claims that “TeleDoctor will revolutionize the medical industry by eliminating any doctor patient barriers that might exist due to language, lack of education, lack of mobility, etc.” This kind of marketing speak is both misleading and dangerous. Here are the disclaimers:

• Telenor neither gives secondary medical advice directly nor engages in the practice of medicine.
• In all cases Telenor is not accountable for the malpractices, genuineness or authenticity of the advice/information given through this service or for the credentials of the medical experts giving the information/advice
• Telenor shall not be liable for any loss or damage caused to any subscriber or any other party as a result thereof.
• This service is designed for the subscribers solely for the purpose of providing easy access to doctors in order to obtain secondary medical advice if and when possible.

Thanks to Ahsan Zia for pointing this out. Also see post on same topic at Green & White.

Guest Post by Mr. Nadeem Irshad Kayani, Director Punjab Consumer Protection Council, Headquarters Office, 135-J Model Town, Lahore, Ph # 042-5857927, 5855471.

The consequences of growing integration globally include enhanced speed & velocity of transactions involving finance, technology, information and transportation of goods and services. The business is on the move globally and off shoring and outsourcing provides cheaper inputs resulting in cost effective products and services. As a consequence business remains competitive and consumers get more options to choose from a range of products and services. The services trade is growing immensely and increased connectivity has provided it with virtual space to move and grow.

The increasing competition due to availability of information make consumer confused but at the same time cost of product and services may decrease to the benefit of the consumer. The standards of products and services can go down and deceptive practices to earn profits may gain currency.

Globalization is not an equitable process and its effects vary depending on the social status and geographical location of the individual. Liberalization, privatization of economy and regulation of the markets are the buzz words these days but in fact regulation and de-regulation of business continues side by side. Need is being felt to introduce rights based regime to face the ill effects of globalization. The human rights of the citizens are a contested domain and they have become an integral part of national and global policies aimed at providing justice and equal opportunity for all. The academics argue that economic and process regulation should be replaced by social regulation including consumer protection.

Every working person wants high quality products and services in return for his hard earned money. The rights of consumers are an integral part of human rights agenda, specifically elaborated in the guidelines for consumer protection formulated by United Nations General Assembly in 1985. These guidelines provide a framework to safeguard the consumers against deception, fraud and exploitation.

Read more »

Cross Post From Green & White. Author: Mansoor Adenwala.

PTCL recently launched three brand new packages for its consumers. But where every other telco in the country is slashing its call rates and finding other ways to make money, PTCL has actually increased its rates! While almost brilliant in their design, the new packages can and will inflate your telephone bill quite a bit so be prepared for a hefty setback at the end of this month if you use your PTCL line at all.

Here’s how.

Before, each call used to cost Rs. 2. Even now, each call costs Rs. 2. But before, one call used to be for 5 minutes, before you were charged for another call. They have conveniently taken the call duration down to 2 minutes. Meaning that call charges per minute have increased by almost 150%! from 40 paisa’s per minute to 1 rupee.
And that’s not all. Sometime ago, off peak calls were metered at 1 hour! Meaning that you could talk for an hour for just Rs. 4. This went into effect after 4 PM all the way upto 7 AM. They’ve changed that, and now off peak calls are charged Rs. 2 again… but now only for 4 minutes and only between 9 PM to 8 AM.

This means an increase of 400% in per minute call charges, up from 0.06 paisa’s per minute to 0.25 paisas.

How’s that for a punch in the face? With electricity, wheat, oil and gas prices going up so.. basic telephony now follows suit.

Read more »