State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Ufone has been launching new services quite rapidly in the last few months, perhaps in response to all the subscribers it lost in the SIM recounts. Most recently Ufone launched Background Music through which subscribers can create a unique ambiance for every conversation they have. It would be interesting to see how this service plays up in comparison to a number of other music related services.

To subscribe SMS ‘SUB’ to 770 or dial 770 from Ufone. After subscribing and selecting the back ground music the subscribers will simply dial 77 before the recipients number e.g. 7703335199942 and can talk to their friends or loved ones with the song playing in the background of the conversation. A Back Ground Music call can be made to any number, any network in Pakistan.

Call charges are not that simple – take a look. Read more »

After IM over SMS warid brings in SMS to PTCL V-Fone. Now all Warid customers can receive and send SMS to any V-PTCL number within Pakistan any day any time.

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Go computing out there on the road with UConnect

Uconnect is probably the most revolutionary VAS that Ufone’s released ever, not only because of its feature set but its relation with the evolution of computing that will altogether transform the way we use computers and information today. The experts claim that all your computer resources that you can conceive today and can predict for tomorrow will all reside on the cloud in not so distant future. Actually we are already there with several tools emerging online.

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PTCL steps up to give more to Lahorees. In their latest regional campaign for Lahore, they are offering three exciting packages for new subscribers.
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1911 Social Service is the latest VAS from Telenor. It brings you all the professional advice you might ever need via one portal on the go. If you are ever in need of any kind of expert medical or legal advice, guidance on how to chart your career path or any other information, simply dial 1911 (one-nine-one-one) to talk to our professional agents and get the personalized attention that you both need and deserve.

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Lesson from emerging telecom market – when revenues per user from voice are going down, find creative ways to encourage users to spend on other (data) services. And that’s what Indian cell phone companies have done by offering radio, sports and other entertainment and religious services over cell phones to rural areas, where such services had never reached before. ARPU comparison below is from a recent WSJ article on the mobile VAS market in India. And this dear readers, is the answer to the “suggest a title” mystery post. The woman in the picture was listening to radio on her cell phone.

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Comedy and joke apps on iPhone meet their equivalent in Pakistan – Warid Comedy Corner is a new service through which you pay to listen jokes and comedy.

The service brings you renowned & distinguished comedians along with their hilarious stand-up comedy sessions and gut-busting jokes in both Urdu and Punjabi. Just dial 420 from your handset.

The cost is Rs. 3/minute. See the list of comedians here. A service like this can be a good break on a tough day … although it may not be “a quick solution to all your tensions & worries”, as claimed on Warid’s web site.

By the way the 420 reminds me of another service by a competitor :)

Missed call alerts services have been around for a while. Warid has introduced this service as a subscription now. And its available for prepaid users for just Rs. 10 + tax per month. Compare this with Telenor’s missed call alert service where service activation is free of charge for the post paid customers (All Packages) whereas all prepaid customers would have to pay a one time charge of Rs.50 (plus tax). Here’s more from Warid.

Now whenever your phone is busy‚ switched off or out of coverage‚ you can rest assured that as soon as you are back in coverage‚ you will be instantly informed about all your missed calls via SMS. With Missed Call Alerts‚ you can enjoy complete peace of mind knowing that you can miss calls but never lose out on them!

Warid now also offers the MCA service to its Prepaid Users and gives free service activation for first month.

Key Features:
1. Available on both Warid Prepaid and Postpaid subscriber
2. Instant delivery of Missed Call Alerts upon subscriber availability
3. Alerts carry calling party’s name if number is saved in subscriber’s phone book
4. One alert per missed call‚ ensuring ease of returning calls
5. Permanent storage of Missed Call Alerts for future reference

To activate the service, type ‘MCA ON’ in a SMS and send it to 129.
Charges:
- Monthly subscription for Postpaid Users: Rs.30+tax
- Monthly subscription for Prepaid Users: Rs. 10+tax.

Now that a week has passed since Eid, we can look back and see if this Eid was any different from the perspective of telecom traffic and service quality. If you go through the news, it would seem as if Eid is an event when the divide between public and the phone companies becomes more obvious and open. For example this piece from Daily Times is very critical of the mobile phone operators. I wonder if the situation on the ground was this bad and if so, are there good metrics available about this?  To be fair, I think that the Public Relations departments of these companies should issue clear statements and engage the public about their point of view as well.

Majority of the customers reported that they had to made several attempts for calls particularly during Chand Raat to Eid Day because of the jammed network. The customers suffered unavailability of connectivity for domestic and internationals calls on Eid Day. Besides, cellular phone call packages after midnights were reported jammed and interrupted during Eid days.

Telecom analysts said that the network controls calls traffic run smoothly in normal days but they are overloaded during Eid as millions of customers make calls simultaneously. They added the flow of calls and SMS depends on the capacity and number of cellular sites, which varies in accordance with the density of their customers in particular areas. There are more than 95.54 million subscribers of various cellular phone companies registered in the country out of which more or less 60 million are estimated as active users. For coverage, there are more than 26,300 cellular sites of all five operators functioning in different metropolis, small cities and villages in the country.

Customers also reported that the balance upload service were not available on the retail outlets as the request failed to transfer and share balance among customers. Therefore, they had to buy scratch cards, which are comparatively costly for them.

On the topic of blocking certain packages, it quoted PTA officials as.

Millions of customers were deprived of greeting through lowest rates Short Messaging Services (SMS) as some operators has suspend their bundles package temporary from Chand Rat to Eid’ third day. They said that the operators suspension of the deals may be a violation of the regulations’ prescribed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) but their reputation were badly hurt in a highly competitive market.

PTA’s Telecom Consumer Protection Regulations, 2009, said operators may withdraw the provision of any service to consumers, provided such withdrawal is approved by the authority and thirty days prior notices is given to consumers. Operator shall clearly communicate the reasons for suspension/disconnection to the consumer along with the action required on the part of that consumer to avoid such suspension/disconnection, it further added. PTA, when contacted, said that it would review all these issues in order to chalk out strategies for the facilitation of the customers in the future.

About suspension of services, PTA will probe into matter and penalize the companies for violating the regulations, a high official said.

A cross post from Basit Ali’s blog

Pakistan vs India cricket match is always a popular event to watch not only in these two countries but everywhere else cricket is played, understood and liked. I was also very excited about the match on Saturday but was also afraid of the possible power failures. It went great for the initial hours but when the match reached the climax at midnight, power company employees showed their dutifulness and switched the power off for an hour.

Now what?

Quickly I tried a few options. First of all, I tuned into a good old FM radio channel that was quick and convenient. At least I could get live score and updates. In addition, I had a few other options for live score updates, for example:

• Cricinfo.com on my mobile browser (http://m.cricinfo.com)
• Cricinfo.com widget on Snaptu, a mobile app that is much more cool than a website.
• Mobilink cricket companion that is a J2ME app for your phone
• Cricinfo’s own J2ME app available from Plusmo

All of the above are text based cricket score tools and eventually were much slower than that of FM radio. I was still missing the TV as I knew that the power is not going to be available. Then I recalled a service that I tried several months ago. Yes, Mobilink TV. I simply directed my browser to Mobilink TV’s wap site and launched the sports channel on my phone. Within a few seconds I could watch the match live. That was the best thing that happened to me in several days :)

It was an amazing experience. I watched the match for almost 45 minutes. But I must warn and inform you about a few facts here:

• The service is very expensive but at that time, it was worth it. It costs Rs. 6/megabyte plus tax. According to a careful calculation, it must have costed me around Rs. 100 or more for these 45 minutes. (I’ll post the exact amount once I get my bill)
• The TV transmission sound was crystal clear but you need external speakers for better experience.
• The quality of video for a 3 inch screen was moderate. I could hardy read the score at the bottom of the screen but could clearly understand what’s going on in the game.
• Like any other internet video solution, there were points when video got stuck for data buffering. May be a few seconds pause every couple of minutes.
• There was around 25 seconds delay as compared to normal TV or radio’s live coverage.
• And yes, there is a specific set of compatible handsets that runs this service. Not all smart phones are compatible. Even the BlackBerries are not :(
• Last but not least, there is a separate access-point setup needed to access these TV streams. Make sure to get the settings by calling the helpline.

In short it was fun to watch cricket without electricity. Lets see how much fun it will be to pay for it :)

Please share your experience if any.

Guest Post by Amirali Bahadurali

In the race of technology, NADRA hits another achievement while it launches a very useful service for verifying CNIC details. Now you don’t need to visit NADRA offices to get someone’s details verified or to get some details regarding this. It has become very easy now to verify anyone if you are going to have dealing or are hiring him/her.

Simply verify their CNIC by sending an SMS to 7000. Write CNIC Number without dashes and send it to 7000. In
response you will get name and father’s name of that particular CNIC number holder (in urdu fonts).
Example: write 3740149922830 and send to 7000 Charges: Rs. 10 plus tax per Message (Around Rs. 12 including taxes)

At the moment this service is available for Mobilink, Telenor and Warid customers while Ufone and Zong are in process to get listed.
One may think that this is a privacy loop hole, however, as it does not provide any contact details of the CNIC holder and only reveals the name and father’s name – so it is acceptable and helpful in many ways.

Talking about benefits, this service will really help the public in there general as well as special matters as you can easily verify
someone’s details to check the scam or fake ones, these credentials can really help out in business deals as well as personal contracts where you need to be sure about the real person.

This service will also be helpful to law-enforcement agencies as they may be able to get more details as compared to public because there is another special number for them. They can get CNIC information by sending the number at 7001. Subscribers will get details through cellular companies which would collect data in real time communication from NADRA National Data Warehouse. This is thought be a secure data transfer as service numbers are labeled as “Special Numbers”.

NADRA is also supporting law-enforcement agencies and govt. to implement and cope up with prevailing law and order situation. This step is regarded as a good initiative as it will support telecom infrastructure as a big advancement and will led others to bring these kinda changes and revolutions.

Ufone and Rozee have partnered to launch a mobile version of the Rozee job portal. This allows user sto get mobile alerts (called U-Job Alerts) and if they have GPRS enabled phone, even apply right there. Users have to setup their profile (city, job category) and subscribe to the service before they start getting alerts. Job alerts will entail Job title, company information and job ID. GPRS Users also have the option to apply for a particular Job by accessing WAP link in the SMS alert.

How useful will this service be?

For some job seekers, getting the right alert on their phone can be very useful, especially in this economy. For others, this could add to the long list of apps which send out sms left and right. From the point of view of employers, it means that they will get a lot of hastily sent resumes. As Mansoor writes, sometimes sending a CV quickly is important but a well-written cover letter is even more important.

Eventually, it all depends on how good is the filtering and personalization — otherwise it will neither help the candidates nor the employers much.