State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

For a nation, there is no power as constructive as its people’s ideas and their courage to make a difference. Like Allama Iqbal has said;

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Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest event for all things mobile lasted for three days from 15-18 February. Apart from developments in applications, new OSs, smartphones debut, alliance formations and much more, the 2010 also event featured two full days of mobile money.

Earlier the mobile money was limited to just a few hours side session, but with the growing global focus on mobile banking, this year it comes bigger.  Paul Leishman from GSMA’s mmublog shares his review of the event.

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The 3RD Global Telecommunication Congress 2010 (TeleCON 2010) with a special emphasis on “Taking Pakistan to the Next Level of Technology Frontiers” is being organized on April 24 at the Pearl Continental Hotel-Lahore by SHAMROCK Conferences International. This high profiled forum is held annually, under the patronage of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

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The final of the Djuice Redbull StreetStyle competition took place on Sunday at the The Forum in Karachi. Although the event kicked-off late, it had put a good show of entertainment and displayed the talent of Pakistani breakdancers and freestylers. I personally never knew the street fever was so high here in our country and having attended the event, I can say that we are not behind anyone.

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Mobilink, Pakistan’s market leader in cellular services proudly congratulates Pakistan Under-19 cricket team on their superb performance in the quarter final and semi-final matches against India and West Indies, respectively. These Pakistani youngsters have shown consistent excellent performances in the ICC World Cup Under-19 Tournament, being played in New Zealand.

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Power crisis derail the performance of all industries but due to competition, mobile companies suffer a lot from this. The use of diesel to run gensets on the cell sites and other offices add to the operational costs of the operators and despite the global recession the call rates offered in Pakistan are the lowest in the world. This was highlighted by Vice President Ufone Naveed Butt at the Telco Blood Bath at LUMS Colloquium 2009. He also said that companies should adopt the policy of simplicity and should focus on customer value.

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Zumbeel- a telecom career etool, have been doing Live Forums (ZLF) from around a year to engage professionals in presentations and discussions sessions on the latest in wireless technologies, its prospects, career hurdles and opportunities and the progress of the industry.

This time around they are coming with a forum on a larger scale bringing together telecom and internet professionals in ‘Are You Online’.

Field of telecommunications and internet together have contributed a great deal to Pakistan’s economy, its image and has called for great investments that led to a new era of progress. Lot more needs to be done and this event will act as learning ground for top cream of Pakistan to learn what and how technologies have done to change the lives of normal people. And how they can use these technologies to enrich their career lives?

The event is scheduled on October 17, 2009 at Avari Towers, Karachi. To know more about free registrations, agenda and speakers profile visit the event website here.

‘Are You Online’ is exclusively sponsored by Telenor Persona Weblounge. Along with TelecomPk.Net event partners include Dawn, FM107, Teletimes, Personality Quotient and  Hire Labs.

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

Guest Post By Faisal Chohan, TED Fellow 2009, Co-Founder BrightSpyre.com. This is a  cross Post From Faisal’s blog.

TED Conferences are one of the best places to be, and sometimes it comes out to be a life time opportunity. On a journey of spreading ideas and going global TED Long Beach Conference ( TED 2009, The Great Unveiling) is followed by TED Global 2009 July 21-24, 2009 (The Substance of things not seen) in Oxford UK, and TED India (The Future Beckons) November 4-7, 2009.TED fellows program under the leadership of Tom Reilly is focused on getting together the world’s future leaders to get inspiration from current leaders of the world. The TED Fellows program is designed to bring together young world-changers and trailblazers who have shown unusual accomplishment and exceptional courage.

TED India’s focus is to get more and more candidates from Asia. So help spreading this word to as many brilliant doers in this region.Here is the full press release from TED. TED Fellows Program Accepting Applications for 100 TEDIndia FellowsOrganizers of the TED Conference has announced they would begin the search for 100 TEDIndia Fellows to participate in the TEDIndia Conference in Mysore, India, following upon the successful TED Fellows program launch at TED2009 this past February in Long Beach, California. The TEDIndia Fellows program will accept applications for fellowships from April 20, 2009 through June 15, 2009. The TEDIndia Fellows program is a part of the larger TED Fellows Program, a new international fellowship program designed to nurture great ideas and help them spread around the world.

This year, organizers will select 100 promising individuals from around the world to attend the very first TEDIndia Conference. At the end of the year, organizers will select 20 individuals from a pool of the TED, TEDGlobal, and TEDIndia Fellows to participate in an extended three-year Senior Fellowship, bringing them to six consecutive conferences. The principal goal of the program is to empower the Fellows to effectively communicate their work to the world.Benefits of the Fellowship include conference admission, round-trip transportation, housing and all meals. Fellows will also participate in a two-day pre-conference with the opportunity to present a short talk for consideration for TED.com, elite skills-building courses taught by world experts, social opportunities and surprise extras.

The TEDIndia Fellows program will have international representation with a distinctly South Asian majority, with approximately 75% of the Fellows representing the South Asian region, and 25% representing other regions of the world. South Asia is defined as including the countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. For the global pool, applications will also be sought from the other five target regions: Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, with consideration to the applicants from other countries.The program seeks remarkable thinkers and doers who have shown unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage, moral imagination and the potential to increase positive change in their respective fields. The program focuses on innovators in technology, entertainment, design, science, film, art, music, entrepreneurship and the NGO community, among other pursuits.

Applicants are generally between 21-40 years of age, though anyone over 18 and over 40 may apply. They must also be fluent in English; though moderate fluency will be accepted on a case-by-case basis. The program was inspired by the TEDAfrica 2007 conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in which 100 fellows participated in a first-of-its kind gathering that featured trailblazing, entrepreneurial individuals vested in creating change on the continent. The TEDAfrica fellows brought with them new perspectives, enormous energy, enthusiasm and ovation-generating talks. Propelled by their energy, TED decided to develop the full-scale TED Fellows program, which debuted at TED2009 in Long Beach, California.“TED2009 was a transformative experience for me, and several of my peers,” said Pragnya Alekal, TED2009 Fellow and now TEDIndia Fellows Coordinator. “For the first time, we were in a supportive community of enthusiastic innovators, all working to make the world better. And after only two months, so many new collaborative ventures and initiatives have come out of it.

There are a few major milestones as important as finding your first job and defining a career path. One of the essential role of a good institution is that it provide information and coaching about the huge transition from a student to professional. As any successful professional will tell you, the combination of good academic credentials, well written resume / CV and preparation for interviews is needed to land good opportunities. A talented student could lose an opportunity because of a sloppy resume. So the first thing is that the candidates need to be well informed and well prepared. Once you have a CV ready then you need feedback from recruiters, managers and other experienced people.

I was browsing a social networking site and saw very positive comments about Career Management Workshops by Telenor in many universities across Pakistan. Of course, there are only so many students that one company can hire, but there’s no limit to the education which companies can provide to students. I hope that other companies follow Telenor’s approach and reach out to schools. Here’s a bit of information about Management Workshops (CMW) by Telenor.

The CMW sessions are conducted by experienced HR professionals with the aim to guide students interested in taking up a career in any industry.

The Career Management Workshop session includes a presentation by the university alumni working with Telenor Pakistan, followed by a summary on the hiring process at the organization. One of the highlight of CMW is the Student Excellence Program (SEP). This is an interactive session where the do’s and don’ts of CV writing and interviews are discussed for the benefits of the students. This is then followed by mock interviews with students selected randomly during the session. The workshop is concluded by collecting student feedback via survey forms.

I think that it is very important for students and companies to engage in this two-way communication. The companies get exposure and can spot exceptional talent. These sessions help students to a) understand the hiring process b) learn about the competencies which companies are looking for and c) how to present themselves in the best possible way. It is a shame if talented students lose opportunities to get an interview because of a sloppy CV.

I have been told that students have found these workshops very useful. If you are a student looking for a job, please share your experience of preparing CV and getting feedback on it. If Telenor has been to your university, tell us about it.

There are a number of good industry events for ICT. On the educational side, I also see good activity and wanted to share one event details which looks very promising. A Short Course on CDMA-2000 and EVDO based 3-G Cellular System is being organized at MCS on 23 May 2009. Military College of Signals (MCS) is a constituent institution of NUST and offers education in the field of Telecommunication, Software Engineering and Information Security for last many years. Registration and detailed info is here.

The training will be conducted by Dr. Syed Ismail Shah, PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, US. Dr. Shah has successfully completed the Qualcomm courses qualification in several areas of CDMA2000. He has given tutorials and training sessions on different aspects of CDMA at workshops and conferences held in various parts of the world. He is the founding member of the Pakistan CDMA forum.

This training will provide a comprehensive converge of CDMA2000 1x RTT and 1x EV-DO based 3-G Cellular Systems. These standards have been adopted for the 3G cellular wireless communication.  This training will provide students and faculty an in depth understanding of the core concepts of these systems; in addition this platform will prove a opportunity to Telecomm professionals to enhance their knowledge and skills on these 3-G Cellular Systems.

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.