An important aspect of true internationalization of the Internet involves support of major languages such as Urdu. Dr Sarmad Hussain of National University has recently achieved a big success with the inclusion of Urdu on the Internationalized Domain Names evaluation site. A big kudos to Dr. Sarmad and his team for getting to this milestone.
Urdu is on a tier 2 list of languages that are being evaluated. Dr. Sarmad has asked people to visit the Urdu Wiki pagesfor Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and give feedback on the points requested.
I was able to browse to the original link which has the Urdu alphabet in IE and Firefox. However I could not use it directly in this post because I need to set wordpress up to support Urdu. Follow this link to go the wiki page.
Read on to see the list of few thing that you can do to test the behavior based on your own working environment. Read more »
Saw this report in the US media about an interesting new approach for providing Internet access to remote areas which lack infrastructure. The idea is to send balloons which soar 20 miles into the stratosphere, each carrying a shoebox-size payload of electronics that acts like a mini cellphone “tower” covering thousands of square miles below. WSJ reports that Google is partnering with Space Data, the company behind the balloon idea, and may even buy it.
Watch the video - by the way hinterland is the part of a country where only few people live and where the infrastructure is underdeveloped. In the context of third world countries entire provinces are hinterlands!
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) isthe 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.
Here’s an application demo on a topic about which you will hear a lot in the coming days: Group and Integrated Messaging. Found out about SwarmTeams at InBabble where there’s an interview with the founder. This looks promising and is something which I could really use. What is your take?
A bit of background which may be interesting to you: Swarmteams has been developed in response to research into biological teams and groups (aka “bioteams”) such as micro-organisms, ants, bees and dolphins. The principles include:
Stop Controlling - Communicate information not orders
Team Intelligence - Mobilise everyone to look for group threats and opportunities
Permission Granted - Achieve accountability through transparency not permission
Always-On - Provide 24×7 instant “in-situ” message hotlines for all team members
Symbiosis - Treat external partners as fully trusted team members
Cluster - Nurture the team’s internal and external networks and connections
As communication technologies improve and number of mobile phone subscribers grow in Pakistan, unwanted telemarketing and sales calls and text messages are fast becoming a concern. We have talked about the lack of identity protection measures and almost no regard about one’s personal information in Pakistan before. The recent PTA warning about unwanted and fraudulent SMS was also discussed here. Other bloggers have also written about the marketers who invade people’s privacy and waste time.
Many developed countries have taken steps such as “Do Not Call” databases which prohibits telemarketers to call those people who are on the Do Not Call list. Facing pressure from public, India’s telecom regulator has set up a Do Not Call system to fight against unsolicited telemarketers (See this article for details). It will be interesting to see if it can make a difference there. Usually such Do Not Call systems require significant effort to regulate and punish the offenders, which can make it difficult to work in Pakistan.
Another related problem is that South Asia is the home to a large number of outbound call centers. Many of these unsolicited calls in US or Euorpe originate from abroad … often the accent of the callers provides a hint about the location of the caller. I have personally received unwanted calls and text messages from South Asia, and that too at odd hours.
With mobile advertising on its way, this situation will get a lot worse - so brace yourself and take precautionary measures to safeguard your information. First awareness is the key: Pakistani bloggers need to continue to spread the word. Next, take charge of your information. Ask banks, phone companies and other financial institutions about their data privacy policies and demand that they should not sell your data or else you will take your business elsewhere. It MAY work!
The recent issue of FLARE has a good article about the pain of spam sms and unsolicited calls. Excerpts:
With 63 million subscribers currently and growing rapidly every month, telephony in Pakistan is witnessing an unimaginable boom but carries one terrible downside “Unsolicited calls”. Banks are the biggest offenders. Car loans, home loans, personal loans, even loans to pay off other loans, and an unending list of unsolicited calls subscribers receive daily. More terribly, the tele-sales persons have complete personal and private information about subscribers, including name, business and personal contact details, the bank where you have maintained your account, your company name and even balance of your account and the transactions you have made recently.
“Once your cellular number is exposed to tele-marketers, you will find that there are more calls you get each day, furthermore. A notable increase in the ratio of marketing calls will be seen once you have posted a positive response to any package. This gives a clear feeling that these telemarketing companies share their data with-in their departments or even with other telemarketing companies likely to be based on barter system” said Ali Hassan, Senior Professor at a local university. Banks also arrange data from other sources as well; hotels, restaurants, online communities, directories and yellow pages are the big sources.
The trend to store more and more digital info and entertainment — such as video, music and digital photos – on the handsets is creating a demand for more memory storage. Apple’s iPhone, with 8GB memory available, has accelerated the race. Flash memory is the term for chips that can store data even if a device is off (also called non-volatile memory). Flash memory is commonly used in usb drives, digital cameras and mp3 players and has replaced bulky and expensive solid-state drives.
The demand for memory in Pakistan is also high. A common use of such memory is to swap content offline. The word from blogistan (Pakistani blogosphere) is that this is how most of the “entertainment” circulates, either from person-to-person or from the street vendors.
According to iSuppli, a market-analysis company, the amount of available memory in cellphones is expected to surge tenfold in the next two years. This puts handset manufacturers in a difficult situation as they struggle to keep the costs down and profitability up. This is less of an issue for high-end phones with better margins.
As recently reported by Wall Street Journal:
Flash is a popular option for handset makers because its thin profile and low power consumption make it ideal for increasingly smaller phone designs. The demand for more memory, however, leaves handset makers a few unsavory options, such as eating the costs, raising the product’s price or making consumers buy their own removable flash cards.
To keep costs down, handset makers have gone with the third option of making consumers buy their own removable flash cards. The companies argue the external memory is more flexible because users can swap out cards with different data.
Good news for Mobilink’s Jazzy customers: Jazz Advance, a new product feature has been introduced by Mobilink. Mobilink’s website describes it as: Jazz Advance enables customers to obtain advance balance by simply calling 123. So you can complete your conversation and keep talking.
Jazz Advance adds value to the brand’s personality while assuring brand loyalty within its customers and offering another attraction for prospects.
The thing that kept me laughing and enjoying TV was Mobilink’s commercial regarding introduction of Jazz Advance. The story board, characters (especially Aslam Bhai ) and message was very clear and well knitted around the brand’s strategy and target segment. Have a look:
Now coming back to the service, on reaching minimal balance i.e. Rs 3.50, one can avail an advance balance of Rs 5.00. The advance amount will be deducted from next recharge. Here, the amount is not big but the help being provided by this feature is important because there could be many situations where one already has felt need for such convenience consciously or unconsciously.
The effect of cut-throat competition is much visible here. Almost all GSM companies in general and Mobilink & Telenor specifically are continuously adding value to their prepaid and postpaid brands to create favorable positioning and to aggressively penetrate for higher market share.
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach adopted by Mobilink is very well integrated with product development & brand management to maximize value for end user . This creates relationship barriers so that customer does not feel being left alone, lowering the chance to switch brand.
Related Items: See this Discussion at Telecom Grid Pakistan.
Address books and keeping them current and accessible has been a problem for a long time. With the electronic revolution the paper address books have gradually went out of fashion, replaced by stand-alone PDAs, spreadsheets, online contact management services and yes, mobile phone lists. But do people usually use their phone lists as THE primary address book? What are the various ways by which people keep the lists current and share that data with other applications and people?
The question is answered in part by a recent report. In a recent post, Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens blog recommended a study: Mobile Life 2006 which looks at the social impacts of mobile phones in Europe. There are some interesting behavior studies there - and I believe that we need similar work in our part of the world. Going back to the topic of this post, on page 10, there is some interesting data:
“Most people only regularly contact 10 people or less on their phone list”.
Allied to the texting revolution is another: the phone list revolution, namely the ability to store many phone numbers in a mobile phone. This has effectively become the modern address book. Overall, 36% of mobile phone users store at least 50 numbers on their phones; but, again, that overall figure disguises the significance of the impact of mobile phone technology on the young. 64% of under 25 have more than 50 numbers stored on their phones – compared with just 12% of the over-60s. 7% of men aged 18-24 store more than 200 numbers on their phones – compared to just 1% of women.
I recently read a news item that a Chinese city has suspended plans to build a chemical plant after a wave of cell phone text and online messages generated strong opposition to the project. This is an interesting case of use of technology in a country where free speech is not always allowed and protests are difficult to organize. The fact that a seemingly trivial thing such as SMS can mobilize an otherwise politically inactive city is impressive. Mobile activism is fast becoming a trend worth watching. Some claim that the most important activist technology of the last five years is the mobile phone.
This brings interesting possibilities to mind about Pakistan. SMS is wildly popular in Pakistan, one reason being the relatively low cost of a text message compared with that of a phone call (actually a recent study showed that Pakistan has one of the lowest SMS rates in the world). Has anyone in Pakistan created a movement based on text messaging? The Nirala sweet incident is one example, this was spread in Pakistan mainly through SMS. The recent “Mobile virus scare” in Pakistan also falls in this category where calls and SMS contributed to the panic. However there is not much technology based activity for the purpose of focused campaigns. The use of online videos from Pakistan is increasing in popularity though at times it is used for propaganda purposes. A big chunk of this is user generated content such as videos made by cell phones. I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see a lot of political activity on the mobile phones in Pakistan.
Around the world many groups are working on defining best strategies for mobile activism and political campaigns. Here’s a recent article about mobile activism and a website called MobileActive.org for civic engagement using mobiles. Here’s a bit more about the China case.
This post in the mobile commerce series provides information about a new study which outlines how the banking and regulatory framework needs to adapt to encourage financial transactions by mobile phones and transform access to financial services in developing countries. This is from a new policy report ‘The Transformational Potential of M-Transactions’ , published by Vodafone in partnership with Nokia and Nokia Siemens Network. The report details new independent research by leading economists from Frontier Economics and Groupe d’Economie Mondiale as well as consultants to the World Bank. The full report, (2.1 MB pdf) can be accessed from a link on this page.
The report shows how these services provide the first real opportunity for many poorer people to get on to a formal “banking ladder” with benefits including reduced threat of crime, time saving and secure savings opportunities.
However, existing banking regulation are inappropriate for the growth of m-transaction schemes. Vodafone, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks are calling for regulators to ensure they do not restrict commercial experimentation or limit the schemes to sub-economical scale. Key suggested changes to banking rules and regulation include:
Review of deposit taking - define and control new ways of making deposits
Access to the clearing system - to ensure that existing systems can handle the transactions smoothly
Adaptation of ‘know your customer’ and anti-money laundering - creating safeguards and audit trails
Interoperability of m-transactions schemes - to ensure fair competition
The report includes work from various investigators and researchers. Since the carriers have a vested interest in pushing for this, I would take the recommendations of this report with a pinch of salt. However some of the conclusions reached here are in line with other studies and from experience of other m-commerce trials and deployments. Standardisation and new rules are needed to help this transition to mobile phone based commerce.
Vodafone Foundation provides a good summary of the findings from this series of studies about mobile banking.
An important aspect of true internationalization of the Internet involves support of major languages such as Urdu. Dr Sarmad Hussain of National University has recently achieved a big success with the inclusion of Urdu on the Internationalized Domain Names evaluation site. A big kudos to Dr. Sarmad and his team for getting to this milestone.
Many developed countries have taken steps such as “
With mobile advertising on its way, this situation will get a lot worse - so brace yourself and take precautionary measures to safeguard your information. First awareness is the key: Pakistani 
The trend to store more and more digital info and entertainment — such as video, music and digital photos – on the handsets is creating a demand for more memory storage. Apple’s iPhone, with 8GB memory available, has accelerated the race. 
This brings interesting possibilities to mind about Pakistan. SMS is wildly popular in Pakistan, one reason being the relatively low cost of a text message compared with that of a phone call (actually a recent study showed that Pakistan has one of the lowest SMS rates in the world). Has anyone in Pakistan created a movement based on text messaging? The 
The report shows how these services provide the first real opportunity for many poorer people to get on to a formal “banking ladder” with benefits including reduced threat of crime, time saving and secure savings opportunities.
Created by Babar Bhatti, TelecomPk.Net is a leading source of information and analysis about Pakistan Telecom industry.
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