Good development. PTA has proposed a few actions for dealing with spam. This includes spams SMS, emails and unwanted calls. See the proposal here or get it from PTA website. I doubt that a fine of 300 Rs will discourage professional spammers. Legitimate companies should start working on their opt-in lists.
It is proposed that a do not call register (DNC) may be maintained by telecom operators. The DNC Register will be a database having the list of all telephone numbers of the subscribers who do not want to receive unsolicited calls. After the establishment of DNC register a subscriber who does not wish to receive Unsolicited calls, can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider to be included in the DNC.
Operator shall upload the number to the DNC within 45 days of receipt. The Telemarketer will have to verify their calling mobile numbers list with the DNC register before making a call. An amount of Rs 300/- per call/message should be prescribed to discourage telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered in Do Not Call list. The defaulter telemarketer will face legal action.The impact of imposing a higher charge for calls and messages which have a commercial purpose attached to them will to some extent ensure that only legitimate calls are made i.e calls to recipients who do not have any problem with attending commercial calls.
Awareness is the key to fighting the spam problem. There are a number of channels listed by PTA but surprisingly blogs and other new media is not mentioned.
The Authority puts forward a media campaign check list which shall be followed by the Authority in collaboration with operators to create spam awareness:
 a) Public awareness activities to target users first and foremost, but also large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, direct marketers and online operators.
 b) General awareness activities to be posted on the Web or other media such as television, newspapers and magazines. Brochures may be distributed in schools, made available on all operators’ websites, and also distributed as a leaflet in IT magazines. Educational cartoons about spam, unsolicited and obnoxious calls controlling and reporting and online security broadcast.
Interesting … Zong is betting that a offering simplicity of call features and calling plans will differentiate it by cutting through the clutter of packages. The concept of this ad may not be original but I think this is a good approach.
The telecom honeymoon in Pakistan which lasted about 5 years (2002-2007) allowed Pakistani consumers to leapfrog over older landline based infrastructure and get cheap and quick access to modern telecommunication technology. The investors, telecom businesses and Pakistani treasury - all made good money and it was a win-win situation. It seems that the golden period for Pakistan telecom is over. The spike in teledensity and corresponding load on the new infrastructure is causing a number of service issues. To add fuel to fire the telecom rates for calls to Pakistan and within Pakistan have started rising, causing a lot of concerns. Consider the following points (follow links for details) from the last few months:
Some people hold the view that given the tremendous progress made, complaining about telecom situation in Pakistan is not justified. Yes, there have been great advances made but if we do not fix the structural issues early on, we will lose much of that progress. Left unchecked we may even regress to a point where there’s plenty of competition but consumers end up without the services they deserve at a fair price. Broadband is an appropriate example … Pakistani public has been tormented with poor service and caps on the usage.Â
I believe that with the right regulatory measures, consumer protection laws and a code of ethics we can keep the telecom sector on the right track.Â
SocialBridges.Org -Â Seeking corporate social leadership in Pakistan.
This is a sign that citizen journalism and blogging is taking off in Pakistan. The topics and content of the SocialBridges will appeal to the growing consumer and commercial segment which needs a strong voice. There are some great insights there with a high-profile set of authors. I look forward to some thought-provoking stories there. See this announcement from Green & White.
Of course Telecom sector in Pakistan has been a major force behind corporate involvement in society. Consider the recent presentation by Zouhair Khaliq, CEO of Mobilink at TeleCON 2008 event in Karachi. The title of his presentation was Mobilizing Social Change and he talked about the recent launch of Mobilink Foundation. Get the full presentation in pdf: Mobilink presentation: Mobilizing Social Change.
Industry revenues are based on these mainstream factors and eliminating poverty is the heartbeat of all the problem whether it comes to you in the form of purchasing power or uplifitng the life trends from one consumer sect to another (higher). These things grow to be a central part of your company plans especially in our GDP environment and rotating them around different conferences provides with the direction to other participants to target the source issue of the market because at the end of the day if I sell dialup connection I would not want to sell at 2Rs if I’m selling at 5 today and you can only do that by increasing the consumer power at various levels and keeping it stable.
Here’s a view of how the mobile companies stack up against each other. In terms of the subscriber growth from Jan-Mar of 2008, Telenor is at the top.
In terms of total number of subscribers (see the chart on the right), Telenor (16.7 million) is closing the gap with Ufone (17.2 million). I am interested in hearing views about the drivers of this growth.
By end of Q2 it will be interesting to re-visit this and see whether Zong lived up to the buzz it created!
Recently I stumbled upon Mobile Marketing Association website. I found the information there to be quite useful. One of the report on their site was about consumer guideline and best practices for marketing to consumers. The context is US market but the principles mentioned in the report are applicable anywhere. I hope that the designers and implementers of mobile marketing programs in Pakistan and Asia pay attention to these. Otherwise mobile advertising may be looked upon as another form of annoyance.
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?
Telenor and Mobilink have started offering in-flight cell phone. These services are roaming with and come with a few conditions. For those who find long flights boring or unproductive this can be a great way to pass time and be productive. But there’s a down side to this. I’m sure you have been noticed what happens moments after when a plane lands? Most people ignore the requests from staff to stay seated and quiet. Instead they whip out their phones and start calling their friends and families. Usually this gets over quickly as people are in a hurry to get out. Now extend this scenario to a long flight. Imagine a chatty person sitting close to you talking for hours during your flight. I tell you, it can be an absolute nightmare!
Here’s a bit of description from the companies about their service:
Mobilink
Partnering with Air France and Emirates through our partner networks OnAir and AeroMobile, Mobilink offers GSM network onboard aircraft; providing not only voice calls and text messages but also data over GPRS. Currently, this service is being provided on one Emirates and one Air France aircraft with plans to roll out across fleets and other airlines in future.
Telenor
Telenor Pakistan proudly launches In-flight mobile phone services onboard International flights collaborating with AeroMobile exclusively on Emirates Airline.
In the US this stirred up plenty of noise — Congress even considered passing a law to ban voice calls on the plane. Then FAA clarified that it was not going to allow cell phones aboard the planes in near future. It is clear that airlines want it and the phone companies want it too. However some powerful consumer groups (read politicians) loathe the idea of a noisy flight. It is the ultimate conflict between businesses and those who don’t like technology intrusion in every aspect of life.
In Pakistan it is less of an issue. People may not even think of it as an issue at this point. But it will be interesting to see the proliferation of cell phone use in Asia and Europe and how people react to it.
Interesting to see the two rivals advertising side-by-side.
Can you tell where is this? Easy enough as there is a hint in the picture.: photo courtsey of Lahore Metro Blogs. Read full story here to see what happens when sun goes down.
A number of competing services are available for providing information and answers to questions on a mobile phone (Telenor Ask in Pakistan, Google’s sms and voice, Microsoft TellMe). ChaCha enters this crowded market with a free, human powered offering. I wonder if the premium service from Telenor Ask is a hit with users in Pakistan?
ChaCha is avaialble in US via SMS (242242) and Voice (800-2chacha). An excerpt from Mossberg’s review:
The service works by routing your questions to one of 10,000 hired “guides” — students, stay-at-home parents, retirees and others — who look up the questions on the Web and reply. They get paid 20 cents per answer.
Naturally, these guides vary as to their speed and accuracy. If you don’t like the answers they give you, or you want related information, you can call back or reply to the text message with a follow-up question. For instance, after learning which pitcher had won for Boston, I asked who lost the game for New York. I was quickly informed it was Phil Hughes.
Overall, I liked ChaCha. In most cases, I received fast, accurate, useful answers. But it has two weaknesses. One is that the low-paid, part-time guides can provide inconsistent service. When I asked for the best Mexican restaurant in D.C., for example, ChaCha came up with a choice that few locals would cite.
The other is that, unlike many other cellphone information services, ChaCha doesn’t automatically know your location. So, unless you include a location in your query, it’s clueless about questions such as “Where’s the nearest drugstore?”
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 is a very interesting post about mobile video from Brough Turner, whose blog I close follow. Brough makes a very good point that mobile video on demand is what makes sense for most cases - not live TV. It also provides one more reason why mobile TV offering from Telenor did not take off (in addition to the fact that it was pricey).
I have an article, Going Mobile TV(pdf), that’s recently been published by MobileIN, a wireless and mobile information site. In it I basically argue that major investments in mobile TV broadcast capability are less likely to pay off than investments mobile video-on-demand.
The biggest trend in commercial television viewing is personal video recorders like TiVo. People want to watch TV content when they want, not when broadcasters schedule it. The only exception is major sports events (the Superbowl or World Cup matches). Even the evening news is frequently rescheduled for later in the evening.
The second relevant trend is growth in YouTube and similar web-based video content. Broadcast TV went from 2-3 channels in the 1950s to hundreds of channels on a typical cable system today. But consumers are also interested in the long tail of millions of videos that can only be served over the Internet today and, potentially, over the mobile Internet in the future.
Finally, survey’s of early adopters of mobile video show music videos, movie trailers, weather, sports action clips, comedy videos, cartoons and amateur video shorts – typically a few minutes long at most – are the most popular content. In addition, it appears 85 percent of mobile video viewers watched viral videos (content sent or pointed out by others) rather than content they found themselves.
All and all, mobile consumers are looking for video -on-demand, not pre-scheduled broadcast TV.
So what’s the logic for massive investments in spectrum, followed by even more money in new wireless infrastructure, followed by the need to sell everyone new handsets that can receive the new broadcast mobile TV channels?
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