State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

The recent BlackBerry security concerns raised by Indian Govt have been reported widely in press. To me it seems that governments around the world are struggling with controlling technology. Just a few weeks ago Pakistan made the headlines when PTCL inadvertently caused the youtube outage. Some wondered if the BlackBerry problems could spill over to Pakistan. I remember reading at TGP that security was the reason for the delay in introducing BB services in Pakistan … so hopefully we are past this obstacle.

Obviously the old-school bureaucracies have a hard time keeping up with the fast pace of technology. It seems that one fine day the Indian government realized that there’s a threat, reacted hastily and scared the market! To be fair, most government agencies tend to work in that mode.

Excerpt from WSJ:

Indian telecommunications operators are negotiating with the government on a framework for BlackBerry usage that will allow the Indian market to expand but also meet concerns for national security.

India’s government isn’t comfortable with the way information transmitted via BlackBerry is encrypted because it’s too complex to be monitored, according to one industry official. The fear is that information can’t be monitored and that this could be a security risk.

These worries had caused some to speculate that India’s government might opt to block BlackBerry messages. But India’s telecommunications secretary Siddhartha Behura downplayed the prospect, saying Friday that “there is no question of banning at this point,” according to Reuters. He said the government is talking to telecom operators and to BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd. of Canada.

PTA issued this warning in local newspapers (source: TGP). I see two good things here: First, the action to move agains the unwanted text messages and a number where people can call to register their concerns. Second, the ad copy is mostly written in urdu terms, avoiding unnecessary English terms about which we complained earlier. But note how Telenor becomes “Telenar” as written here.

Good start but this will require more work by PTA to clarify the “code of conduct” for sending sms. I hope that soon we will see some more information on PTA site about this initiative.

Back in 2000 “Any 2 Any” was a catch phrase coined by e-business consulting firms to market technologies and solutions for innovative device to device communications. It was supposed to be a big driver for the “new economy” - if you remember that phrase. Just one problem: the Internet bubble bust and the any 2 any stuff didn’t happen. As usual it was too early and the hype did not live to the expectation. However I was reminded of the recent technology improvements by an article in Economist (When everything connects - The coming wireless revolution) which provides a good overview of machine to machine communication.

The article talks about the new wireless technologies - wireless sensor networks, RFID (tags). Lets see if the Fridge is ready to talk with the cattle?

Here are a few key points from the article:

In coming years wireless will vanish entirely from view, as communications chips are embedded in a host of everyday objects. Such chips, and the networks that link them together, could yet prove to be the most potent wireless of them all. Example: Tags will certify the origins and distribution of food and the authenticity of medicines. But we are stil far from the

The wireless-communications revolution is about making digital information about anything available anywhere at almost no cost. No longer tied down by wires and cables, more information about more things will get to the place where it is most valuable.

For the moment, the mobile phone is stealing the show. It is evolving from a simple phone into a wallet, keychain, health monitor and navigation device. But as mobile-phone technology matures, even more innovation is taking place in areas of wireless that link things only metres or millimetres apart.

Etched into silicon, the radio is starting to benefit from the dramatic decreases in size and cost and the huge increase in
performance that have recently propelled computing. Satellite-navigation chips today cost as little as a dollar apiece.

The decrease in cost of chips will drive the adoption of these technologies. Developed economies will use it for commercial purposes. Develping countries will have to focus on critical issues first.

Security and privacy will be of primary concern.

Standards, spectrum availability and government regulations will be important for all this to happen.

This post has barely scratched the surface of these topics. A few additional resources are presented. Here’s a link to a related Economist audio interview file in mp3. Also see this DRITTE link about a technical book on Wireless Networking in the Developing World. And here’s a blog about RFID.

This is second in a series about mobile commerce. The first post was a case study about mobile wallets in Japan. In this post I review the efforts by US banks and financial institutions such as credit card companies to push mobile commerce as another channel for their clients.  This post is based on a study and report by Information Week. As you go through this, compare this with the experiment in Japan, especially how applications are loaded on the phone … it will be interesting to revisit this after a few months.

Citibank has unveiled Citi Mobile, the first downloadable mobile banking application from a major financial services provider. After enrolling online and downloading the app to a cell phone or smartphone, customers can view balances, pay bills, transfer money, locate ATMs, and click to call customer service.

Citi Mobile can be downloaded to 100 cell phone and smartphone models. It’s initially available in California, but Citibank says it will be out in other states by midyear. The app has been more than a year in development, and Citibank execs think U.S. cell phone users are ready to do more than talk and text on their phones. “They can manage their accounts while sitting at a red light in their car,” says Steven Kietz, Citi’s business manager for enhancement services and e-commerce.

Citi Mobile has the graphics

Information Week is not so sure. As they say: There will be a growing market for mobile banking when there’s a need for immediacy, like emergency fund transfers and balance checks, predicts James Van Dyke, president of payment consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research. But his take on a mass market for mobile bill paying: “It’s ridiculous.” The banks beg to differ, though. Wachovia, which has a mobile offering, says mobile bill paying is one of the top customer requests.

Since the Citi Mobile app resides on the phone, it’s faster and offers a graphics-intensive interface that’s closer to online banking than text-heavy Web-based apps. Customers select the Citi icon on their phones to access accounts instead of navigating through multiple Web pages on a tiny screen. They’ll also receive new features automatically whenever Citibank makes an upgrade available.

Bank of America took a different approach, launching its WAP-enabled Web-based mobile banking service in February. Most mobile browsers can access the service, which lets Bank of America customers check account balances, pay bills, and transfer funds. “We chose to go with a WAP application, so that everyone can access it,” says Sanjay Gupta, an e-commerce executive for Bank of America. The downside: WAP displays information mostly in text form without rich graphics.

More from the report:

Wachovia also went with a Web-based app, launching its Wachovia Mobile service in December. It works only with Web browsers that come on smartphones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, and the Palm OS. More than 50,000 people access Wachovia Mobile each week, says Ilieva Ageenko, the bank’s director of emerging applications.

But Wachovia has another option in the works. It has teamed with AT&T, which will offer later this year mobile devices preloaded with a mobile application for accessing Wachovia’s and other bank’s services. Preloading the app makes it easier to use on the phone. By getting together with AT&T, Wachovia has “enough footing to reach out to this huge base of customers,” says Ageenko.

But preloaded apps have their downside since the number of customers a bank can reach is limited to the number of phones its app is loaded on. But even with downloaded and Web-based apps, banks may have to work hard to convince customers to sign on. “Instead of banks giving away toasters, maybe they’ll give away phones,” says Richard Crone, of Crone Consulting. Also, putting an app on a mobile device could increase calls to the support center as people struggle to get an app to work on a particular device, thus increasing a bank’s costs, he says.

Besides usability and access issues, security looms as a potential problem. Mobile applications preloaded on cell phones mean personal information will be stored on phones, posing a huge risk. The good news is that the banks are putting a lot of effort into securing their mobile offerings. With Citibank’s Citi Mobile service, the phones don’t store any personal information and transactions are secured with 128-bit encryption, the same technology that’s used at Citibank.com.

Customers accessing Bank of America’s online banking service from their cell phones are protected by the bank’s SiteKey security technology. Data also remains encrypted when it’s sent between the phone and the bank. Once AT&T rolls out mobile devices with Firethorn’s preloaded banking application, it will have the ability to remotely wipe devices clean of personal data if they’re lost or stolen.

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