State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Have you noticed the common elements between the telecom industry of Pakistan and Bangladesh? Three of the top 4 telecom companies in Bangladesh are also doing business in Pakistan. Telenor is present in all of sub-continent. Regulatory authorities in Bangladesh (BRTC) and Pakistan (PTA) have also worked together and shared best practices. Here’s a short review of the mobile telecom companies in Bangladesh.

1. Telenor Bangladesh – Grameen Phone
2. Bangla Link
3. AKTel
4. Warid

According to BTRC (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission), the total number of Mobile Phone Active Subscribers has reached 52.43 million at the end of December 2009. Note how Mobilink (13.87 million) is trailing behind Telenor / Grameen which has 23.26 million – the opposite of their situation in Pakistan. Warid (2.99 million) is at number 3 both in Bangladesh and in Pakistan – however in Bangladesh, Warid has sold its majority stake. In Pakistan, Warid is still in “talks”.
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Nokia has made a huge move in the mobile mapping and navigation area: it now offers free global navigation (for drivers and pedestrians) on Nokia smartphones. These free-of-charge navigation services are intended to boost Nokia’s service offerings and sell more phones. This is the same direction which Google was moving in with its free navigation software. The free turn-by-turn directions by Nokia mean that navigation device makers such as TomTom and Gramin will be impacted.

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Venturebeat – a popular blog about high tech startup companies  – published a post about Help Me, a startup which provides affordable support to mobile app developers. The company behind this is Next Generation Innovations, based in Karachi, Pakistan. CEO of Next Generation Innovations, Farzal Dojki is very active and well know in Pakistani ICT circles. Great work Farzal!

Here are a few excerpts from the post by Saad Fazil.

Mobile app support is currently non existent, and a niche where we can help provide affordable support, says Farzal Dojki.

Currently Apple doesn’t have a very good after-sale support mechanism for the apps in its AppStore: Users click on a “Report a Problem” button, and are then prompted to go to the developers website, where they can directly contact the developer. Developers working with Help Me would link their contact information (email or phone) to Help Me so that Help Me can then take over the support.

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USF has been active in extending ICT access to under-served areas of Pakistan. Now its the turn of South Punjab to get  Broadband Internet, funded by Universal Service Fund (Ministry of IT), worth Rs. 1.95 billion. This project will be implemented through PTCL and Worldcall and will providebroadband facilities in un-served urban areas of Southern Punjab. This covers a population of 4.4 Million in 38 cities located in districts of Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, D.G. Khan, Khanewal, Leyyah, Lodhran, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Rahim Yar khan, Rajanpur and Vehari.

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We have mentioned the efforts of making telecom infrastructure green many times. The goal is to expand mobile communication to areas not served by electrical grids, as well as to reduce operating expenses and environmental impact. Vodafone Qatar and Alcatel-Lucent announced the deployment of the first hybrid powered Base Station in Qatar, using an integration of solar and wind energy. Vodafone and other companies intend to learn from these trial sites and plans to apply these techniques all over the world.

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Mobile services are fast becoming popular for a number of consumer-facing product and service companies. I came across a good post / reference for business strategists and marketers who want to justify a budget for mobile applications, services and campaigns. When it comes to Return on Investment, there are a few things which one should remember:

• Reasonable time frame for payback
• Count all major benefits
• Consider both hard costs and resources
• Factor in risks

Excerpt from the blog post follows. Read more »

Growth of Pakistan telecom industry took a hit in recent months because of economy and regulation of SIMs. Even though the number of new subscribers slowed down and the revenues per user remained low, Pakistan telecom industry has shifted to a whole new set of services which provide value and convenience in ways not possible before.  One of the interesting trend of 2009 was the rush to offer financial services via mobile phones aka mobile financial services (MFS). These services include transactions such as remittances (person-to-person payments), payment of bills and others commerce enabled by mobile/cellular technology. This post provides an overview of MFS in Pakistan.

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I came across this article from CNET on frequently asked questions about smartphone safety and thought that I’d share it with readers. Never a bad idea to remind ourself about safety of data and apps. Here’s the basic checklist:

1. Do you have data on your phone backed up in case you lose it?
2. Is there business or personal information (such as accounts or passwords in messages) which is easily accessible to someone who gets hold of your phone?
3. Are you aware of the applications installed on your phone: commerce related apps, social networking apps
4. Be careful about the usual phishing and other social-engineering scams – with so much browsing on the phone, it is more likely these days to follow a bad link and give away your password by mistake
5. Beware of sending sensitive info over unencrypted WiFi

Read the article after the break.

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There has been a lot of debate and discussion about LTE and WiMAX standards. The battle has been played at different levels: geography, countries, telecom equipment makers, network operators etc. LTE has certainly picked up a lot wins but as this WSJ report shows both LTE and WiMAX are widening their foothold.

Though WiMax does have some momentum, LTE is expected to be the broadband standard of choice for most wireless-service providers. The two technologies have similar capabilities, but LTE has less upfront costs for carriers since it can be built on top of existing network infrastructure.

Now that Long Term Evolution is shaping up to be the wireless broadband standard of choice for the U.S. and most developed markets, start-ups building silicon for wireless consumer devices are pushing out chips for the standard. Read more »

We have talked about netbooks and how the drop in price of these devices will impact computing, mobility and the need for mobile data consumption over wireless networks. The trend for smaller, cheaper Internet based devices continues full speed. See the graphic below (via WSJ) compares current netbooks to “smartbooks”, the next generation of ultra mobile netbooks.

On the occasion of 27^th International Telecom Management Information Platform (TEMIP) User Group Conference held at Hamburg, Germany PTCL Network Operations Centre (NOC) team has been honored with ‘Special International Recognition Award’ on displaying exemplary expertise acquisition for extensive utilization/ customization of product features in an exceptionally short time span.
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We hope that you enjoyed the information presented on TelecomPk.net this year. Here are the top 20 posts from over 550 posts from 2009.

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