State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Recently a few readers and friends have asked about the google maps feature on mobile phones called find me (aka blue dot). This is a feature from google maps for mobile phones which shows your approximiate location on a web enabled mobile phone. GPS is not required. People love it! See this official google page for details on how it works, including a video.

The question was: how does google know my location in Pakistan? There are 2 pieces of local information needed: the tower location data and other is the map data. There are companies which sell such kind of data so expect this feature to be available at more and more places. Rest of the algorithm uses the signal information and the application is able to locate you within a certain degree of accuracy, therefore the term blue dot.

So go ahead, use your web-enabled phone and download google maps in case you don’t have it. And if you use this feature often please share where and how or better yet, send us pictures.

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 »

Location based blogging site SpotJots won the prize for NavTeq global LBS challenge 2008. The key take aways here are that  location based applications are quickly gaining ground and this is the future direction of social networking.

First launched in 2003, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is focused on driving the development and visibility of innovative navigation solutions for wireless devices. The application had to work on a Nokia N95 device.

In my opinion this is an extreme form of blogging - social blogging with latitude as spotjots calls it. For some neighborhoods it can be very relevant and the imagery and map resolution can be captivating. I found it a bit too much to see the map rectange with every post. What would be better is to have a geocode associated with each post (and perhaps tags with relevant words which come automatically as you hover over).  Overall it will be best if this could be integrated with one of mainstream news and information site.

Guest Post By Umar Farooq

This post is referring to the service you use on your mobile device, which is powered by your location at the moment in time. It could have GPS working behind it or could be the network operators Base Stations ( Antenna Towers ) where your location is being calculated.

In the recent past, operators have a hard time deciding whether to offer Location Based Services or not. Arguments in favor of the debate include,

1) Large Subscriber bases
2) Increasing mobile penetration
3) Availability of more advertisement real estate

and against the debate,

1) Substantial infrastructure cost
2) Market readiness
3) Driving safety

There are more arguments on both sides but these could be taken as primary ones at the moment. Looking a the arguments in favor, the only point which will effect the service for the end-user is the where it will enable operators to use it as an advertisement real-estate. Subscribers will be bothered every-time they pass by a pizza outlet, which has placed its advertisement with the respective operator. An SMS on your handset every time you pass near a boutique, can become quite irritating.

Arguments against the service keep in view that market may have become quite large but it is not ready to take on complex services at this moment. It will be sometime before market matures itself to the point of absorbing this service.And then the disturbance it will cause while you are driving, could be significant enough to mark an increase in road accidents.

While keeping all of this in view, it would be worthy to find out what the readers of this blog feel about this service, if introduced into the market.

Please feel free to post your comments about the possible pros and cons of this service.

Umar Farooq is currently working as Director at a telecommunication services and consulting company. He has worked with Ericsson in the past, with its Systems Integration unit. Umar is a graduate of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Insitute.

Hear what Big Blue has to say about the future of mobile phones. This discussion of a IBM mobile learning executive and a Motorola director touches upon some interesting directions such as text to speech and location based technologies. Technology companies realize that this is the time to define their territory and are eager to share their visionary thinking. One of the point worth mentioning from this conversation: phones have to fit well with people’s lives and not the other way around.

Over the coming years, mobile phones are expected to get “smarter”, adjusting to our usage patterns. Innovations such as larger projectable screens and other e-commerce and social networking features will enable the phone to provide much more value to our lives.

Future Of theMobile Phone - IBM

Navigation, traffic and location based services on mobile phones are one of the hottest value-added data services. Where available, they are one of the largest money makers for wireless carriers and content service providers (traffic, search, other information). However only a handful of countries have high resolution digital map data to support the full suite of these services. Nevertheless traffic information can be very useful anywhere in the world and location aware mobile marketing is supposedly the next big thing. Some of the companies and services in this field include TeleNav, Networks In Motion (used by VZ Navigator), TelMap, MSN Live and Google maps. Most services require GPS capability on the handset but other technologies are also used to estimate location.

Here’s how these services work. I’ll share TeleNav GPS service description from InBabble to give you an idea of how these services work. I have recently tested the Networks In Motion product and found it to be both useful and user-friendly.

TeleNav GPS Navigator is a subscription-based application which can be downloaded to more than 200 different types of mobile phones and devices. The service provides turn-by-turn voice and on-screen driving directions with 3D moving maps (just like an in-car navigation system or standalone personal navigation device). Addresses can be inputted into the phone via the keypad or using voice recognition. Alternatively, a customer can preplan trips online via MyTeleNav. If a driver makes a wrong turn, they are automatically rerouted. TeleNav GPS Navigator also includes features like traffic alerts with one-click rerouting, updated gas price listings, more than 10 million business listings, location sharing and restaurant reviews.