State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Mobilink Jazz has come up with another limited time reactivation offer. This time for those who have not used your Jazz connection since the 10th of February 2010.

In this offer after putting the Jazz SIM back and sending an SMS to 550, customer gets 50 free minutes. Everyone who has received the 50 free minutes can also get 300 more free minutes by recharging in each of the next three months.

Customers who have lost their SIMs can get new SIMs free of cost from their nearest Mobilink franchise or CC centers. Other service mechanics of the offer can be found here.

PTA yesterday released the subscriber numbers for January 2010. The year begins with a drop in overall subscriber base to 95.4 Million as compared to 97.6 Million at December end dropping the mobile density to 58.20%.

The operator suffering the most loss was Warid, losings 2.6 Million subscriber and making its market share 16.97% which was 19.4% in December 2009. Tough time for the new CEO.

All other operators showed some growth with Mobilink still leading the market and Telenor following it. As a result of drops in Warid, Ufone now ranks at third position.

With Telenor bringing innovations to the mobile banking and Mobilink also planning to penetrate with the same soon, the competition will definitely elevate as the year unfolds.

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.

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Mobilink Jazz has come up with another limited time offer of  unlimited (limited to 500) SMS to any network in Pakistan between 12:00am (midnight) to 12:00 pm, for Rs 1.99+tax/day. It is also worthy to note here that Mobilink had earlier taken back its unlimited SMS offer without prior notification. Hope they are clear on the limits of this offer this time and announce before taking it off.

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Telecom companies in Pakistan are seen working towards the social improvements in the society under their CSR activities.

The popular ones from last year include:

• Telenor Khuddar Pakistan initiative for the persons with disabilities.
• Ufone Child Healthcare Initiative which will revamp Children Ward and Children OPD in major hospitals nationwide with the goal of making it more hygienic and comfortable. Ufone has started with a revamp of Children Ward/OPD at the Federal Government Services Hospital, Islamabad commonly known as Polyclinic.
• Warid’s GIVE and National Polio Immunization Drive with Rotary Club.

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Jazz News Watch is an interesting way of providing news clips to Mobilink customer’s phones.  Jazz News Watch is a MMS based news alert service where subscribers of this service receive headline news clips from their subscribed TV channel every 4 hours as seen on the TV screen. So you get one MMS for every channel that you subscribe to – you will pay for all these MMS at Rs. 6 + tax per message. Jazz News Watch is a subscription based service and users can subscribe to this service against a fixed monthly fee.

This is one of the examples of providing fresh content via data services which can help uplift the ARPU for telecom companies.

Compatible with most MMS enabled handsets, Jazz News Watch is available for both Indigo & Jazz subscribers. Currently, Jazz News Watch is offering three news channels for subscription i.e. EXPRESS 24/7, EXPRESS NEWS, and SAMAA TV and more channels are yet to come. Monthly subscription for each news channel is Rs. 30 +Tax.

Telecom companies have started using  Twitter and other social media platforms for effective customer service and brand promotion. The quality of how companies use these new media channels varies a lot. I wanted the readers to take a look at how customer service should be done - as shown by T-Mobile -  and the mistakes that Mobilink and Ufone are making.

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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.

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There is a lot of talk about the news that Punjab Government has unanimously passed a resolution banning late night offers/packages by mobile phone operators. Daily times reports it as follows:

Members of the Punjab Assembly (MPAs) on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution banning late night packages offered by mobile networks at cheap rates in keeping with “moral and social values” and to “maintain the youth’s health and prevent vice”.

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PTA has just released 2009 December mobile subscriber stats. Though it would have been nice if  the industry could hit 100 million mark in calendar year 2009, we are content about the overall progress (7.6 million net additions) of the telecom segment. Mobilink had a good last quarter, ending with 30.8 million susbcribers and retained its market share of 32% from the beginning of the year. Telenor is firm at second spot. Ufone also showed good progress (18.5 M) towards the end of year but overall it fell behind Warid (18.8 M) which became the number 3 in terms of total subscribers.

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Mobilink Jazz had earlier offered the Ghanta offer which was hit-back by Ufone’s Super Ghanta offer. Looks like those Ghanta offers weren’t enough and now Mobilink Jazz has come-up with 24 Ghanta Offer. This allows customers to talk for 100 on-net minutes in a day for Rs 29+tax. To avail the daily 24 Ghanta Offer subscriber will have to move to a new tariff plan by sending an SMS to 676 (One time subscription charges of Rs 30 apply). After subscription the following new rates will apply:

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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.

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