State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Transfers of large amounts of data across the Internet to wireless devices suffer from a major problem: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used to send and receive that data can be unnecessarily slow. Aspera, a new company, has now announced an alternative protocol designed to accelerate wireless transfer speeds. Called fasp-AIR, it includes new proprietary approaches to addressing problems of data transfer that are unique to wireless communications.

This story appeared at Technology Review.

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A recent article in Technology Review provides an interesting account of a wireless network that uses reflected infrared light instead of radio waves. This wireless network has transmitted data through the air at a speed of one gigabit per second–six to 14 times faster than the fastest Wi-Fi network.

Such optical networks could provide faster, more secure communications and would be especially suitable for use in hospitals, aircraft, and factories, where radio-frequency transmission can interfere with navigation equipment, medical devices, or control systems. Another possible application is wireless networking for home theaters; a system that transmits data at 1.6 gigabits per second could broadcast two separate high-definition TV channels across a room, a capacity that exceeds the bandwidth of any existing radio system. Read more »

Guest Post by Naveed-ul-Haq, Member, ISOC Pakistan Chapter. Assistant Director (ICT), PTA.

Editor’s note: Mr. Naveed-ul-Haq attended the fourth annual Internet Governance Forum meeting in Egypt in November as an ambassador of The Internet Society (ISOC) , Pakistan Chapter. We thank him for sharing his experience and views with us.

While living in today’s world of technological modernization where humans and devices are in continuous interaction with each other, Internet evolved as a unique innovation that now has became a necessity. This evolution didn’t happen overnight, it has an historic link with ARPANET (a defense based project initiated in 1963 to exchange data packets over computer network). Then after 25 years of research and development of standards, Internet came into use of common man during early 90’s.

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New data from TeleGeography’s 4G Research Service show that there were more than 600 WiMAX networks either live or at the planning/deployment stage by the end of 2009. The number of WiMAX deployments significantly exceeds HSPA and LTE deployments. Only around 300 cellular networks have been upgraded with HSPA technology and fewer than 70 operators have committed to deploying LTE equipment. However one point is note worthy: a relatively small number of these WiMAX systems offer wide coverage areas; most only offer local or regional service. This is certainly true for Pakistan!

Telecommunications provider Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (www.ptcl.com.pk) announced on Thursday it has opened the largest data center in Karachi, Pakistan.

The data center is designed to be consistent with international standards and data center certification bodies.

The facility is protected from intrusion and failure with multi-layered security, fail-safe redundancy, diversity measures, and rapid response recovery measures, says the company. See video below.

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The discussions on 3G and 4G hinge on a fundamental question. Will the investment make sense for the industry in near term? We know that in long-term, 3G and 4G technologies offer great benefits. As this article mentions, LTE, a version of 4G, uses the radio spectrum more efficiently, improving network capacity. That will be crucial as smart-phone use explodes, straining cell networks. Consider the case of Verizon in the US which is pushing for 4G/LTE. Much of the investment for Verizon is around the purchase additional spectrum. It spent $9.4 billion for that in 2008. The same concerns apply to 3G in Pakistan.

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The 668 Sim Information campaign is playing a  vital role in withdrawal of unauthorized registered SIMs. PTA have taken it a step forward, now it is also available on mobile via SMS. Users who wish to check on the SIMs registered against their CNIC can now send their CNIC number (without dash/space) t0 668 and get a prompt reply with details of name of service provider and number of SIMs.

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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.

We use Internet all the time, but the majority know not much about the history of it. While browsing YouTube, I got a chance to see the “History Of The Internet” in this animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

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When compared with cellular phone growth, Broadband has been slow to take off in Pakistan. However the last two years show some progress  in terms of growth (a little over 20K subscribers per month), more choices of services in more places and most importantly a significant drop in cost for broadband access (~Rs.1200 per month on average). Another welcome trend is to move towards unlimited broadband.

PTCL has taken the lead with its DSL and EVO offerings while WorldCall, Mobilink Infinity, Wateen / WiMAX, Qubee,  NayaTel and Wi-Tribe have also offered their services.

According to PTA, “broadband subscriber base grew by 146% adding 245,727 subscribers during July 2008 – June 2009, while broadband connection charges for 1Mbps connection dropped below Rs. 1000. There were 413,809 Broadband subscribers in June 2009 as compared to 168,082 in June of 2008.”

At the current rate of broadband growth we can cross the half-million mark by December 2009. We need to get to 1 million much faster.

Daily Times recently wrote about broadband, excerpt below.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s (SDPI) Study Group on Information Technology and Telecommunication in its 56th meeting discussed the problems that hinder broadband growth in Pakistan. Relevant stakeholders participated in the meeting. Wahaj ul Siraj of NayaTel and Zamir Bhatti of Wi-tribe reviewed the existing policy and infrastructure sharing issues.

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The story has been the same for many years. The surge in network activity at Eid time is accompanied by service issues. And recently some companies have withdraw certain popular packages, SMS in particular. My thinking is that if a company can’t offer these packages during the peak times, then don’t bother offering it at all. Otherwise it sounds like switch and bait and hurts the brand reputation. Read more »

Here are the results of the poll from October about smart phone data usage. As you can see a majority of users who participated in this poll are power users. This is to be expected as people who read blogs tend to be early adopters and thus more likely to be mobile data users. Also see the results from my own usage as of today. The very obvious trend is that wireless data usage is on the rise and mobile phones are fast becoming the most common device for accessing information. Network operators and service providers need to adjust their business models to take this into account. The pace of this acceleration of data usage varies by geography but its only a matter of time before this becomes a global phenomenon.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll.