State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

This is getting really interesting; a new rumored device from HTC has now been surfaced out of no-where code-named HTC TOUCH HD. It looks like HTC is now going full device touch screen with the amazing screen size of 4 inches & astounding resolution of WVGA (800X480).

The HTC Touch HD is all poised to be the ultimate device in the much hyped TOUCH phone segment with all the making of the real I-Phone killer. The phone is rumored to be based on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional & will be running HTC Touch Flo 3D (just like Touch Diamond).

Below is some known specification highlights of HTC TOUCH HD, meanwhile the Touch HD is said to be due in Christmas means we can expect its announcement really soon. Read on for specifications.

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Public announcement about changes to a few important numbers. The first one, directory number change from 17 to 1217, is controversial. What used to be a free call is a local call now. Combined with all the other rates going up at PTCL, the timing of this is not good. Based on prior comments here and at other forums, public sentiment is not in favor of this change. Here’s a bit of information, taken from a PTCL press release:

The ‘14’, ‘17’ and ‘18’ service numbers have now all been changed to ‘1214’, ‘1217’ and ‘1218’ respectively.

As everywhere else in the world the new and improved directory inquiry service of PTCL will be charged as a local call from 1st June 2008. PTCL has also employed hundreds of call center agents to accommodate customer queries efficiently and promptly.

In its efforts to provide callers updated information, PTCL recently launched the 0800-01217 toll-free number so that customers could update their information in the PTCL database free of cost.

Second item is about conversion of traffic police number from 915 to 1915. In the past this was a local number available in Karachi and Islamabad. PTA reviewed the policy and decided to increase the numbering capacity and to make it a standard short code without the need of dialing an area code. It should now be available in Lahore as well. Both old & new codes shall run in parallel for a period of six months. After December of 08 only 1915 will work.

First Global TeleCON conference was held in Karachi Sheraton on April 29-30. The organizer’s website has full agenda details and the summary is provided below. The organizers, Shamrock Conferences, deserve credit for sharing the agenda and making the presentations available online. The impressive thing about this conference was that there were many senior level speakers representing all stakeholders (industry, government, academia, consumers) in Pakistan telecom. The discussion was organized along the following tracks:

• Policy & Regulatory Framework
• Connectivity & Mobility
• Putting Customers First
• Converging Technology & Infrastructure into Business
• Preparing Today for Tomorrow
• Role Playing in Telecom Industry

I browsed through a few presentations and found the presentations on policy issues, consumer protection and challenges for emerging markets to be educational and interesting. In the coming days I’ll write more about them. There were of course some other talks (for example by PTA and mobile companies) which fell in the category of self-promotion. I wonder if this conference was a mere networking event or was there some other purpose to it?

This is bad news for Pakistanis abroad: they will pay considerably more for calling Pakistan starting May 1. See the news item from Dawn. It seems to me that we are regressing in terms of policy making. Who benefits from this? PTA and long distance operators. What about consumers? Well, a lot of consumers and industry experts are upset and are taking various actions such as expressing their concerns through various offline and online channels (see this petition). One thing is certain: the grey telephony market will flourish because of this. Expect more noise around this in the coming days. I am not looking forward to my next bill for international calls!

Salman Ansari (former CEO of Paktel) has posted interesting predictions at various online forums. Here’s an excerpt:

Quality of calls of inbound calls specially from the US will become terrible (cellular terminations) as most inbound terminations will come in via low cost grey market – biggest culprits will be the biggest carriers (AT&T, Bell Canada, etc).

Wasim Baig summarized his views about this change at TGP:

Pros:
1. LDIs get a higher rate, higher margin
2. APC contribution increases
3. Origination increases
4. Balance of trade in PK’s favor

Cons:
1. Grey market increases
2. LDI may increase origination rates as well
3. Yet more regulation! PTA stays relevant to pricing ..
4. Market pricing takes a back seat

Here’s more from Dawn article.

“The PTA, in fact, has addressed the demand of local operators, who have been pleading for increase in such rates, as it would not affect the local consumers of the facility,” said the source. “But it would naturally increase the cost of calling to Pakistan from outside”.

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The Djuice.Pk blog is no more. Telenor asserted its rights to the .pk domain name associated with their brand and took it over from PKNIC, the registrar for .pk domains.

Some of you may have seen the mobile and entertainment oriented blog Djuice.Pk. When I first came across it the first thing which crossed my mind was - where is Telenor? At that time, Telenor’s official Djuice site was at Djuice.com.pk. Recently it was reported at TGP that Telenor filed a case against Imtiaz Shafiq of Pakpoint Network who had registered the Djuice.pk domain . The Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center issued its decision against Pakpoint (see full document). This is one of the high profile domain name dispute.

Domain name conflicts has always been full of controversy. In this case Telenor had a valid case. However the way this case was handled was debated at Telecom Grid Pakistan with many good points from each side. I hope there is a lesson learned here that companies need to be diligent about their brand.

Here’s a peek at some of the interesting upcoming mobile phone technologies. These include next generation voice-recognition which allows you real hands-free control of phone, 3D maps, sending streaming video to cell phones, games (mobile second life), digital storage of documents for mobiles, surveillance, social applications which allow you to locate buddies using GPS and location-aware apps which provide personalized suggestions about attractions like restaurants as you’re walking around the neighborhood.

This post coincides with one of the biggest wireless event: CTIA, which opens today. Many of new mobile and wireless technologies are announced there. I’ll cover that soon.

Video courtesy of Wall Street Journal. Let me know if you are interested in the full article.

In the November issue of Global Telecom News:

• Korea’s SK Telecom acquires Hanarotelecom
• Rise of HTC in Taiwan and how it is playing dual game with windows and linux
• 3G pushes demand for chip industry

As we have been discussing, SK Telecom, Korea’s top wireless service provider, had plans to expand its business. But SKT has not yet made a move outside Korea. It has been announced that SK Telecom will take over the country’s second-largest telephone and broadband line provider, Hanarotelecom. SK Telecom’s acquisition is expected to trigger a flurry of mergers and takeovers in and outside the telecommunications industry, according to Korea Herald. The stocks of SKT have soared on this news.

Taiwan’s High Tech Computer (HTC) is the largest maker of mobile phones running on Microsoft Corp’s system. Now it is hedging its bets by going with Google’s android and it joined on the open handset alliance. HTC also expanded a distribution agreement with U.S-listed Brightpoint to improve the global reach of its entire range of products and services.

The business opportunities of the third generation (3G) mobile telecommunications chips booms in China. Chinese government has officially announced to support TD-SCDMA and GSM (GPRS) as the mobile telecommunications standards in China. Taiwan Business News reports that this means that a few companies will benefit from this.

ZTE Corporation, in charge of the TD-SCDMA network establishment in Beijing, Qin Huang Dao, Xiamen and so forth, says that the network establishment in most areas and Olympic game stadiums in Beijing will be completed by the year’s end. The network coverage rates in Liaonin, Tienjin and Shenzhen will top 90 percent. The TD-SCDMA mobile telecommunications network will be able to come into use in the top ten cities late this year or early next year.

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In this issue:

1. China - Opens Handset Manufacturing Market To Outsiders; SK Telecom Attempts To Break Into Chinese Telecom Market
2. India Working On 3G Policy, New Players Expected
3. Cell Phones To Solve Africa’s Problems?

China will allow foreign handset manufacturers to compete for their huge market, reports Shanghai Daily. China now has more than 500 million mobile-phone subscribers and is adding an average of about 6.8 million subscribers per month, according to the Ministry of Information Industry. 

China announced that it would relax license regulations for handset manufacturing. China’s State Council has abolished some 186 administrative examination and approval items covering mobile communication systems and terminals. Now is the time to let the market rule and see qualified new players replace the market positions held by established companies which depended heavily on the income from renting licenses to other companies, according to United Securities. The new players such as Tianyu, largely unknown by established industry players, have challenged and even surpassed leading domestic firms like Ningbo Bird and TCL Communications.

At PT/EXPO COMM China 2007, a telecom tech fair held in Beijing, SK Telecom offered tech-savvy Chinese consumers a taste of their mobile future. Using a Chinese-developed mobile telecommunication technology called TD-SCDMA, Korea’s largest mobile phone operator showcased international video telephony and high-speed mobile multimedia functions such as video on demand and real-time TV. SK Telecom is expected to accelerate a foray into the Chinese telecom market after becoming the second largest shareholder of China Unicom.

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This article notes that a study at Cambridge University found that 40 million adults in Europe (around 9 percent of the adult population) experience problems using mobiles, and the number of people who encounter difficulty increased with age. The elderly can often have trouble using modern mobile phone keypads.

Well, in Pakistan some of our adult population has difficulty due to many other reasons including illiteracy and unfamiliarity with gadgets.

In India people are willing to spend big money on so-called vanity or premium mobile numbers. Economic Times writes:

Guess how much will it cost to own 9999999995? Please pay Rs 15 lakh! Or if you are interested in 9855555555, then put a minimum bid of Rs 2 lakh, say mobile phone marketers. 

According to industry sources, many operators reserve some special series for politicians and bureaucrats, which are doled each time a government changes. Thus, few numbers never get released in the open market.

The craze for VIP numbers is highest in Punjab - where often the price of a VIP registration number exceeds the price of a car. Says a Hall Bazaar (Amritsar)-based mobile distributor: “Until now, the highest bid we have received is Rs 7.5 lakh for the number 9800000001. But other numbers like 9780000091 or 9780000009 can be bought for upwards of Rs 1 lakh. The series is open for sale.”

From Korea. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics achieved the most successful quarterly results at the 3rd quarter of this year, selling 43 million and 22 million. Stock experts predict that Samsung will record KRW 16 trillion in revenue and 1.7 trillion in operating profit, a big increase from the result of the 2nd quarter, and LG will show 9 trillion in revenue and 280 billion in operating profit, offset by low sales of home appliances.

Research In Motion Ltd. reported that its quarterly revenue and profit more than doubled from a year earlier. The handset maker signaled its intention to move more aggressively into the wireless-content space, outlining a new free service called BlackBerry Unite. The desktop software will allow small groups of users like families to share content like calendars, music and documents wirelessly.

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See keynote at Wimax world 2007 by Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior . She talks about the impact of Wimax on both emerging (Pakistan) and mature markets (US, Europe) and about the new on-demand applications which will ride the wave of always on mobile broadband. At a time when Motorola is struggling to regain its leadership position, WiMAX has become critical to Motorola’s future. 

Pakistan is mentioned at 5:20, 9:40 and 13:36.

Thanks to Ajit for the original post at OpenGardens blog.

This new series will bring you interesting telecom and technology news bytes and headlines from around the world. Please share comments on whether this is something you’d like to read on a regular basis.

Cell phone helps Japanese stay in shape. NTT DoCoMo introduced a “Fitness Phone,” designed to help the user stay healthy — and avoid bad breath (just breathe into the phone to get a reading). The primary target groups are said to be fat-fighting middle-aged businessmen and young women on diets. Sounds like a great combination of market segments to me! See a video demo here.

China Mobile and other Hong Kong telecom stock peaked recently because of 3G expectations. Telecom stocks also gained after the Chinese regulator said it is relaxing the pricing and other policies in the mainland’s fifth 3G license auction. “Talk in the market that China will issue the 3G licenses soon and restructure the sector drove telecom shares higher,” said Jackson Wong, investment manager at Tanrich Securities.

India is planning 50,000 WiMAX based Internet kiosks. BSNL is set to issue tenders for setting up 50,000 Common Service Centres catering to semi-urban and rural areas across the country. The project has a target date of Aug 2008 and is expected to get a special spectrum clearance. BSNL has bigger plans for WiMAX rollout in urban areas as well. 

Adobe released new version of its flash player for cell phones, Adobe Flash Lite 3. This version promises to bring the quality of live video on cellular phones closer to that of video on computers. More than a billion Flash-enabled devices are expected to be available by 2010. Nokia is betting on this new version to bring rich content such as videos and animated ringtones to its phones. More here.

Vodafone is increasing its push to India and Chinaamong other countries. Vodafone CEO Sarin’s main strategy is to increase Vodafone’s presence in countries that are driving regional economic growth and gain a majority stake in the right companies. Vodafone has majority stakes in wireless firms in India, South Africa and Romania. Is Pakistan part of Vodafone’s plans? No indications so far.

Disney will shut down its branded cellphone service. It had planned to sell phones featuring Disney content and services aimed at children and their parents. However, MVNO model failed to take off. Disney will instead license its content to other carriers.