I thought the term ‘Sim Jagao’ was an interesting marketing phrase to ask people to start using Warid’s prepaid SIM again. I have noticed a number of such offers from all the mobile operators. Mobile number portability is one of the reason. Today it is easy for a customer to switch service. This ‘churn’ is an issue for the companies. My advice: pay attention to customer service and customers are more likely to stay with you.

This offer is for Warid prepaid customers who have not used their SIMS Since January 01, 2010. All such customers upon reactivating their SIMS will immediately get Rs.30 in their accounts as free activation balance. And not only this, they can also get free balance equal to 50% of their first recharge for three months. Another exciting feature is that the customer can enjoy facility of two numbers in their F&F list, one of Warid and one of any other network with the charges as low as Rs. 1 + Tax/min. This offer is valid till 15th June 2010.

Mobile devices are increasingly subject to many of the threats that plague personal computers. Now a leading security researcher has presented a new way to detect malware on mobile devices. According to this article, the new approach  can catch even unknown threats and can protect a device without draining its battery or taking up too much processing power.

Researchers have begun to identify ways to protect devices from malicious software. But traditional ways of protecting desktops against threats don’t translate well to smart phones, says Markus Jakobsson, a principal scientist at Xerox PARC and the person behind the new malware detection technology.

Most antivirus software works behind the scenes, comparing new files to an enormous library of virus signatures. Mobile devices lack the processing power to scan for large numbers of signatures, Jakobsson says. Continual scanning also drains batteries. His approach relies on having a central server monitor a device’s memory for signs that it’s been infected, rather than looking for specific software.

Devices have two types of memory–random-access memory (RAM), used by active programs, and secondary storage, which takes longer to access and generally holds data not currently in use. Jakobsson’s system would check a device by first shutting off nonvital applications, such as an e-mail app or a browser. At that point, nothing should be running except the detection software and the operating system itself. He demonstrated the software using a device running the Android mobile operating system at the RSA conference.

If malware is present and active, it will need to use some RAM to execute instructions on the device. So the central server contacts the detection software to check to see if malware is using RAM by measuring how much memory is available. It does this by completely filling the remaining memory space with random data and checking the amount of data needed against a fingerprint of the memory that was created when the device was known to be malware-free.

At this point, any malware running in the open would be revealed. The malware could try to hide its presence by allowing the random data to overwrite it in RAM, Jakobsson says, but this would prevent it from taking any further action. And if it tries to hide by accessing data in the device’s secondary storage, this would slow the device’s response to the central server, revealing the presence of malware.

At the time of launch of easypaisa, many people wanted a service they can host from their mobile phone. I see mobile accounts as the service that lets you do that. It is not any over the counter service like bill payments and money transfer but  a virtual Bank Accounts opened for Telenor subscribers to access from their own mobile phones at any time.

Registrations for mobile accounts are available only from Telenor SSCs, Telenor Franchises and Tameer Bank Branches. Once registered users only have to go to a Merchant to ‘Deposit Cash’ or ‘Withdraw Cash’ from their easypaisa Mobile Account. All other services can be accessed on the user’s mobile phones.

The account opening request usually takes 7-10 minutes to enter into the system. Then the subscriber is called back in 3 hours after Nadra CNIC verification. Account will then be activated and subscriber will be asked to select a 5-digit PIN. The account opening fee is Rs. 50 + tax (non-refundable).

Limits on transactions are Rs.10,000/day, Rs.20,000/month, Rs.1,20,000/year, do not apply on Transfer In. Maximum balance of Rs. 60,000 is allowed in particular account at any time.

Once all the procedure is complete you may do mobile banking by USSD *786# and avail the following services:

Utility Bills Payment
Money Transfer to easypaisa account
Money Transfer to a CNIC (Over The Counter)
Schedule payments
Cash Deposit
Cash Withdrawal
Transfer In from a Tameer Bank Account
Transfer Out to a Tameer Bank Account
More payment solutions coming soon

Details of the service charges can be checked here.

Research and Market, the world’s largest market research resource have recently published forecast reports of next five years for mobile operators of Pakistan and other countries. The key points of the report as mentioned in its summary give a very interesting picture of the state of telecom industry in Pakistan.

• Subscriber growth is slowing down in Pakistan’s wireless market ; +7.0% industry average subscriber growth in 3Q.2009
  • The wireless penetration rate is still low at approximately 60% in 2009, and it is expected that the country’s wireless market will continue to show strong growth. The forecasts says that total mobile subscribers in Pakistan will increase from 96 million in 2009 to 134.8 million in 2014. So, we might touch 100 million by 2010 end.
    
  • Mobilink will continue to be the largest player in Pakistan’s mobile operator space over the next five years. The expected mobile subscribers of Mobilink will be 36 million  in 2014.
  • Also, given the latest quarter numbers, the forecast predicts that Ufone will have 25.8 million, Telenor will have 29 million, and Warid will have 25.3 million mobile subscribers by the end of 2014. In this case Mobilink will still be playing on its first mover advantage and the lead the market with Telenor at second.
  • Market share loss at Mobilink and market share gain at China Mobile Pakistan from 2010 – 2014 is expected. In terms of shares of total subscribers, we expect that Mobilink’s market share will decline over the next five years, from 30% in 2009 to 26.7% in 2014. On the other hand, we expect China Mobile Pakistan’s (Zong) market share to increase from 8% in 2009 to 13.7% in 2014. The Zong’s growth predicted is quite low.
    
  • The market shares expected at Ufone, Telenor, and Warid will be approximately 19.2%, 21.6% and 18.8% respectively in 2014.
• ARPUs are decreasing in Pakistan’s mobile operator space; -8.0% operator-wide average ARPU growth in 3Q.2009
  • ARPU levels will remain low in Pakistan’s mobile operator space. We expect that the industry average ARPU will remain in the range of US$ 2 – US$ 3 over the next five years. This could be the worst consequence of indulging into price war.
  • In 2014, Mobilink’s monthly ARPU will be at highest among operators at US$ 2.64. The operator with the lowest monthly ARPU will be Warid Telecom with US$ 1.67 in 2014. There is a high chance of Mobilink’s ARPU being dependent on its post-paid subscriber base, which will continue to be the largest.
    
• Minutes of Use per Subscriber are increasing at Mobilink and Telenor; +12.5% industry average MOU/Sub growth in 3Q.2009
• Strong EBITDA growth at Telenor in the latest quarter; Industry average EBITDA growth was +0.4% in 3Q.2009
  • Given the excellent performance by Norway’s Telenor in Pakistan’s wireless market in the recent past, the forecasts is that its EBITDA margin (calculated as EBITDA / reported revenue) will be increasing from about 23% in 2009 to 35% in 2014.
  • On the other hand, Mobilink shall maintain its EBITDA margin of approximately 35% over the forecast period, 2010 – 2014.

I came across an article in New York Times on advances in shopping technologies. The effort to turn people’s mobile phones into information displays and ordering devices is on. Here’s a quick list of the technologies you could see on a cell phone soon:

• Scan and shop (various apps)
• Presence (IBM)
• Mobile Concierge (Cisco)
• Mobile Loyalty Cards

Shoppers will soon be able to stand outside the designer Norma Kamali’s boutique in Manhattan, point a phone at merchandise in the window and buy it — even late at night when the store is closed. How? By using technologies such as ScanLife which allows customers to scan bar codes on merchandise. Other apps allow users to do perform product search and price comparison through barcodes.

Ms. Kamali is at the forefront of a technological transformation coming to many of the nation’s retailers. They are determined to strengthen the link between their physical stores and the Web, and to use technology to make shopping easier for consumers and more lucrative for themselves.

Some supermarkets intend to offer real-time coupons while people shop. For example, a promotion for milk may be sent to a shopper’s mobile phone the moment her cart rolls into the dairy aisle. Drugstores will offer loyalty programs on cellphones, not on plastic cards. And specialty chains will allow shoppers to breeze through the aisles compiling a wedding registry, just by pointing at merchandise.

Privacy concerns are of course a barrier to all this. Not everyone would trust these apps and download them. So it remains to be seen how many shoppers will embrace such aggressive merchandising, which will generally require them to consent to being tracked electronically while in a store.

But many stores are betting they will go along. After all, people already wander city streets guided by maps on their mobile phones. Why shouldn’t the same technology lead them to the toilet paper in Aisle 3?

Hoping to use the technology as a competitive advantage, some big chains are reluctant to discuss their plans. The Sam’s Club division of Wal-Mart, Crate & Barrel, Kerr Drug of North Carolina and Disney stores are among the retailers that confirmed they were testing various mobile technology or planned to do so soon.

Other retailers have begun testing a product from I.B.M. called Presence. Shoppers who sign up can be detected as soon as they set foot in a store. That enables Presence to offer real-time mobile coupons. And tracking shoppers’ spending habits and browsing time in various departments can help the system figure out who might be moved to suddenly buy a discounted item.

Presence can also make product recommendations. If a shopper was buying cake mix, Presence might suggest buying the store’s private-label frosting and sprinkles, too.

“We’re also able to do predictive analytics — predict what we think you might want based on what we already know about you,” said Craig W. Stevenson, an I.B.M. executive who oversees Presence.

Cisco Systems, the supplier of networking equipment and services for the Internet, is also a leader in the field. The company’s Mobile Concierge system is capable of connecting customers’ smartphones to retailers’ wireless networks — so a shopper could type “Cheez Whiz” into a cellphone, then pinpoint its location in the store.

“We see the smartphone being used more and more in the shopping experience,” said Dick Cantwell, Cisco’s vice president for retail at Cisco’s Internet business solutions group

In the bloggers meetup with Mobile Account, Ali Abbas from Tameer Bank highlighted that it was the branchless banking regulations from State Bank of Pakistan that eased mobile banking in Pakistan. With this I went on my hunt for the regulation document and studied to know its details. In this and coming posts I shall look at the regulatory preservative of Mobile Banking as governed by the SBP’s Brachless Banking Regulations 2008.

First, lets take a look at the permissible Branchless Banking (BB) models.

Also in line with the policy, only a Bank-led Model of BB is allowed and in any one financial institution, one customer can have only one BB account.

One-to-One Model, in this model one bank offers mobile phone banking services in collaboration with a specific Telco. The outreach is limited to the customers of a specific telco. But interesting flexibility this model offers is that one bank may have one-to-one arrangements with many telcos or alternately, one telco can have several one-to-one arrangements with many banks. This model may be JV between a teleco and a bank where they can share all the expenses. e.g easypaisa

One-to-Many Model, this allows a bank to offers mobile phone banking services to customers using mobile connection of any Telcos. This model offers a bank the possibility to reach the bankable customer who have mobile phone connections. The drawbacks of this model is that telecos do not allow a dedicated channel to the bank, the bank will have to rely heavily on its branch network and above all the bank will have to bear all the expenses. eg. MCB Mobile

Many-to-Many Model, in this many banks and many telcos join hands to offer services to virtually all bankable customers. This model offers the maximum connectivity and hence maximum outreach but requires a central transaction processing system (like 1-link) controlled by a group of financial institutes. This model is so far not being implemented in Pakistan.

Alternate Channels: BB can also be done using agents other then Telcos (like Fuel distribution companies, Pakistan Post, chain stores etc.) and using technologies not limited to mobile phone (like GPRS, POS terminals etc.). The above mentioned models without the involvement of telecos may also be applied to this type. This model again is not being implemented in Pakistan.

I will close this post here. Will get back on more under the same topic soon.

Reference: State Bank of Pakistan

This WSJ article on Telcordia shows how telecom is also getting caught up in the intense politics of South Asia. Telcordia had helped with mobile number portability and now that has come under scrutiny by Indian government. Quite funny. We had heard the same kind of concerns about Telenor. Is this an isolated instance or does this mean more trouble for telecom vendors who are doing business in South Asia?

Telcordia Technologies Inc. sold its software to several cellphone companies in Pakistan a few years ago, just as it has done in 14 other countries. Now that fact is making life difficult for the U.S. company in Pakistan’s archrival, India. Telcordia makes back-end software for wireless and fixed-line networks.

Millions of Indian cellphone users are awaiting the chance to switch wireless providers while keeping the same phone number. Telcordia, which is based in Piscataway, N.J., was one of two companies the Indian government selected to provide crucial services to carriers in the transition to so-called number portability.

But in recent months, India’s Home Ministry has raised objections that partnering with Telcordia could compromise national security, effectively putting the company’s plans on hold.

The Indian ministry noted its concerns that Telcordia “has presence in Pakistan,” according to notes from a January meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the government body that reviews foreign investments.

Read more about this after the break.

The Home Ministry “has serious concerns over telecom security” and the potential for unauthorized eavesdropping if the foreign vendor is allowed to manage number portability, the notes say.

Anuj Kapur, Telcordia’s India country head, said in an emailed statement the company’s only business in Pakistan has been the sale of its standard “clearinghouse” software that helps cellphone companies coordinate user requests for transferring numbers to a new service.

India has allowed in other telecom companies that have operations in Pakistan. Norway’s Telenor ASA, for example, operates one of Pakistan’s largest wireless carriers and is the majority stakeholder in an Indian wireless start-up, Unitech Wireless. Given that, “It’s hard to make an argument that Telcordia shouldn’t be allowed in,” said Harit Shah, a telecom analyst at Angel Broking in Mumbai.

The Telcordia issue threatens to further delay number portability in India, which the government has already pushed back three months to a March 31 deadline because some carriers say they aren’t yet equipped to make the switch. Some analysts say the industry is simply dragging its feet. “There are operators with a vested interest to push this back,” said Kunal Bajaj, managing director of telecom consulting firm BDA in New Delhi. “They’ll find any excuse to delay it.”

Number portability would be a boon to India’s 525 million cellphone users, making it smoother for them to switch providers and demand better customer service from their existing carriers. But it could mean new costs for carriers.

Telenor Weblounge provides a self-service online tool that allows users to sign up for (or port your number to) Telenor services and get a golden number free with it. The wizard based system walks you through 5 steps as shown below – at the 4th step, you can search through available numbers and select one. This is Telenor’s answer to Zong’s Book your Number online. Overall the features and service offered by Telenor Weblounge are comprehensive and the wizard based approach makes it easy to sign up.

Online self-service is the wave of the future and this is the right solution for net savvy customers who want to control their accounts and services from their home or work.

Telenor explains that:

You have the freedom to choose between golden number and any other number. The main functionality of Weblounge allows you to port your number from any other network to Telenor with convenience, make online payments, choose and subscribe add-ons of your choice and many other special offers. This all can be done through credit/debit card payments and your Sim will be delivered at your door step through TCS.

Reports are circulating that Microsoft plans to introduce long-awaited new software (Windows Mobile 7) for powering cellphones in Barcelona this week as the company seeks to regain ground lost to rivals like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in the mobile market. Compare Apple which went from zero to over 13% smartphone share, MS only gained 1% more from 2006 till now, its a dismal performance. It has been a rough time. Microsoft acquired a startup Danager along the way, fired most of its Windows mobile team last year and botched up data backups for Sidekick. WSJ reports:

The operating system, Windows Mobile 7, sports a revamped user interface that resembles the look of Microsoft’s Zune HD music player, said people who have seen it. Bloomberg News earlier reported the planned announcement.

Microsoft also has a separate mobile project, unlikely to be announced next week, to design a cellphone aimed at teenagers, people familiar with the matter said. The device, code named Pink, is a successor to the T-Mobile Sidekick, a youth-oriented smart phone powered by software and services from Danger, a start-up Microsoft acquired two years ago.

In addition to Windows phones with more pizazz, Microsoft needs to strengthen its following among independent mobile-software makers. Such “apps” are a big selling point on iPhones and handsets running Google’s Android operating system, adding everything from games to photography programs.

Ezetop, an international group focused on international and online mobile phone top-up today. It provides services of top-up to any  phone back home for many countries, including Pakistan.

Anyone from abroad with a credit card can send a top-up instantly to a pre-pay mobile phone. For your family and friends back home, it is an easy way to send support instantly and cost effectively, and they can call you back whenever they want at their normal low calling rates.

For Pakistan, the service is available for Mobilink, Warid, Ufone and Zong prepaid connections. Amount USD.5.00 sent will deliver PKR356.71 mobile top upto to the subscribers.

How it works: