State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

The soft launch announcement about Mobilink Infinity, Mobilink’s Internet and telephony service, is out. This is another milestone for WiMax in Pakistan. Unlimited data usage and voice for Rs. 1200 at 1 Mbps! For the residents of Karachi these are good introductory rates, valid till October 2008. There’s the initial cost of Rs.16K for CPE etc.

Full information and details about this offer is not available so its hard to say if it is just a teaser offer or will it be around for a while. From a marketing point of view it seems that the official media campaing and website were not launched first. Perhaps Mobilink has learned a thing from Wateen’s product launch mistakes. According to the announcement, “Mobilink Infinity is now an operational business arm of Mobilink. Mobilink Infinity will provide high speed and reliable internet connectivity along with access to a landline through VoIP.” Thanks to Uzair for posting the info on TGP!

Also see the welcome letter.

CIO Magazine has covered Wateen’s WiMAX launch and its partnership with Motorola in Pakistan. The article is very brief and falls short of mentioning link dot net and WiTribe.

Wateen has placed an order with Motorola to provide more of 198,000 more CPE units for the accelerating markets. This order has been recognized as one of the largest orders for WiMax CPEs in the world.

The CPE, or Customer Premises Equipment, enable consumers, small businesses and Pakistan’s largest enterprises to access wireless services — a vast range from basic telephony and fast internet access to high-end data services such as virtual private networks.

Whether or not the solution is something that the Pakistani market is ready for, is yet to be seen. however the ‘proof of concept’ of the subscribers in Pakistan is right here, and has already opened the door to two other competitors launching services in the market in the past two months.

Salman Munir writes at Green & White about his unexpected high bill from Wateen. The reason? the bill included line rent which should have been zero according to Wateen’s campaign. For background see posts about Wateen’s tarrifs and product launch.

I very clearly remember their sales representative (wateen’s, not franchise) hammering it on my head that, I would only be charged Rs. 1350/- Per Month for a 512KB /10GB cap package. And for that I was required to give 11 months post-dated cheques and first month in advance with equipment cost. Now, if you look at exhibit A, they have managed to bring out Rs. 891.50 worth of charges, i’m liable to pay.

Its the 3rd billing month and this is the first bill i’m receiving. What’s interesting to note is the line rent for telephone service, their IVR hold music also very clearly announces “telephony services for ZERO line rent!”

I was not yet satisfied with their falsified claims by Wateen’s support staff about why they are charging me Rs. 1350 and every billboard out their announcing that I should be paying Rs. 799/- for the same. Now, they have sent me unjustified bill.

What you guys think about Wateen’s policies? Do we, consumer have any say in this? What we, as consumers can do about it?

An optimistic point of view, reported at WiMAX.com.

According to Juniper Research, half of all mobile WiMAX subscribers will be located in Asia by the year 2013. This half will account for roughly 40 million subscribers concentrated mostly in Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan and Australia.

The reason? It is believed that WiMAX’s growth will initially be spurred by areas where wired access was not a viable option. WiMAX’s ability to deploy quickly and efficiently in areas that were previously underserved will make it an attractive option for such countries and locales.

Top markets for 2013, according to the research, include the United States, Japan and South Korea. The caveats? Spectrum and devices. In order to reach a potential 80 million subscribers licenses must be acquired in a timely fashion. Furthermore, in order to utilize the WiMAX network, WiMAX-enabled devices will be an obvious necessity. Future projections on the success of WiMAX are hinged on these two elements. Therefore, as more spectrum is allocated and more devices are developed the likelihood of these future projections will continue to increase.

Looking at the comments on this site about “tower sites for sale” it appears that cell phone tower related  business transactions are a major contributor to the telecom sector in Pakistan. And this seems to be true for Asia in general. I came across this article from Financial Express, India:

Ugly steel towers, with oblong boxes stuck on their sides. No brand ambassadors and no branding either. But, as mobile telephony majors rush to expand their network across India, the 15-metre tall towers that pick up and relay signals from one place to the other are becoming one of the hottest business activities in the information and communication space. Even a year back, few among investment bankers would buy the idea that passive infrastructure like towers could create value for the shareholders of telcos. New technologies like WiMax could today add to the bonanza and widen the scope of the passive infrastructure business. The towers in future will not only be rented by GSM and CDMA service providers, but also telcos who adopt WiMax technology. With 1,20,000 tower sites in the country and a demand for a pan-India telecom footprint extending beyond the semi urban landscape, there would be an increase of at least 200% in the number of sites, industry people say.

Investments to the tune of Rs 66,000 crore wil be required for setting up an extra 2,20,000 towers over the next three years, going by the current cost of Rs 30 lakh for a cell site, according to estimates from Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). If the number of wireless subscriber base in India is to reach 577 million by the end of 2017, the network would require 3,75,000 towers, given an average tenancy of 2:1, say Kotak Institutional Equities Research estimates. First, it was the third party independent service providers like GTL Infrastructure, who sensed a business in creating the passive telecom network. GTL hopes to have 25,000 towers in the country by 2011. At present, its towers are rented by five operators in several places, mostly in non-metro cities and semi-urban areas. And their business model does not stop at GSM and CDMA telecom service providers. “We hope that in future, internet service providers (ISPs) and WiMax vendors will also rent our towers,” says Rupinder Singh Ahluwalia, executive vice-president of GTL. Their plans include use of land near the towers to set up communication kiosks for e-governance, wherever there is an opportunity. Rolling out infrastructure in one of the world’s fastest growing telecom market requires heavy investments.

Read more »

Article from Taiwan about the potential growth of WiMAX in coming years. Full story here. This is in the context of rapid overall growth of the information and communications technology (ICT) market in the Asia-Pacific region. The spending will reach US$154 billion in 2008, up 10% over 2007, with China and India together contributing about half of the spending, according to a prediction by ICD.

With companies of worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) network to start building related hardware next year, the new network technology is expected to bring huge business potential worth US$25 billion worldwide in next five years, according to Market Intelligence Center (MIC), a market survey institute for the sector making ICT (information and communication technology) products.

Also, Topology Research Institute (TRI) opined that market demand for mobile WiMAX network will start growing in 2008 and sharply increase in 2009. In 2011, registered users of the network are estimated at 30 million persons all around the world.

MIC noted that starting this year through 2010, the U.S. plans to invest US$5 billion, the largest amount in the world, in constructing WiMAX network, with Taiwan and Korea to respectively pour US$1 billion and US$900 million in that. After bidding for WiMAX licenses, bid winners in Japan are also expected to funnel a total of US$3.8 billion into building WiMAX.

In fact, development of WiMAX technology is different among developed and emerging countries, with the U.S. tending to focus on integrated products based on the technology, and India, the Middle East and Pakistan on fixed WiMAX initially to make up their penetration rates of broadband network.

Wateen’s WiMAX has been one of the most active topic of discussion in Pakistan telecom circles. After many months of planning and early marketing campaigns, there is news from Wateen on the official launch of its WiMAX based triple play services. For those who have been waiting for the rates,  the tariffs are now available on the Wateen site.

The CPE cost presents a significant one-time investment for home users. Monthly rates are reasonable - as long as you don’t mind the caps. Overall I think the WiMAX broadband will only appeal to certain demographics, which are not price sensitive. I did not see any tariff info for business users.

For home users the following packages have been announced:

The official press release:

Read more »

As announced in various press releases, Motorola continues its bet on WiMAX. Part of the financing of this initiative is by Morotorla. See previous coverage of WiMAX in Pakistan and here. This is an interesting and expected development which puts pressure on Wateen to execute on the hype it created.

Motorola Inc. said Wednesday it has reached an agreement with telecommunications company Mobilink GSM to create a wireless network in Pakistan.

Motorola will design and set up the system using WiMax, a technology that allows transmission of wireless data over long distances.

The network will cover major metropolitan areas in Pakistan including Lahore and Islamabad and will allow Mobilink to extend its cellular service to include high-speed broadband.

This is the second such system Motorola will create in Pakistan and its fourth in the Middle East and Africa region.

Here’s an exclusive coverage of Korea technology show in Dallas this week. Even though large Korean companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai are well-known all over the world there are many small to medium sized Korean companies which are working hard to establish themselves. This exhibition was part of this effort by these electronic and telecom firms to market their products in US.

The event included an exhibition and a Future of Communications Forum in which SK Telecom, Nokia, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon presented. I attended the exhibition and the talk. I was very impressed by the level of innovation, quality of products and the effort to market their work with high quality presentation material and politeness. In this post I’d like to share some of the interesting products I saw there. In later posts I’ll cover other companies and related topics (such as WiBro) in more details. There will be a separate post about the presentation by SK Telecom on the telecom trends.

In the exhibition there were over 50 companies covering telecom (IPTV, VOIP, telecom infrastructure), electronics (home and portable electronics, bluetooth multimedia, PC components) and home/office security monitoring.  There were quite a few medium sized companies and startups in the telecom field; here’s a brief lineup of the prominent telecom companies - please visit their site for more info. You can also contact me for details to know further about my discussions with these company representatives. 

• BlueBird Soft - PDAs for consumer and business use
• Ace Antenna - E-tilt antennas
• Gamma Nu - IMD free antennas
• Modafun - Portable wireless router
• SOLiD Technologies - Interference cancelling repeater
• Shell-line - Slide hinge modules
• NextLink - Interference cancelling repeater
• Sunwoo - Interface cancellation systems
• Korchip - Electric double layer capacitor

Please stay tuned for more coverage of the exhibition and event.

In a major step forward for WiMAX, ITU has approved WiMAX to be included in the International Mobile Telecommunications category . Here’s an excerpt from Information Week.

The WiMax standard got an important international thumbs up this month when the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations, agreed to recognize it as a next-generation wireless technology. With its inclusion among International Mobile Telecommunications standards, WiMax joins a list of recognized 3G mobile technologies that includes CDMA and FDMA.

WiMax will get its biggest initial tests in countries that are trying widespread deployments, such as Taiwan and Pakistan. Taiwanese officials last week pledged to spend $664 million on a WiMax development program, looking to make the country the center of WiMax equipment manufacturing. Taiwan plans to cover the country with mobile WiMax in what would make it the technology’s biggest test bed, and a business-government partnership also unveiled the technology’s first WiMax application lab to let developers test new WiMax applications such as VoIP and entertainment.

This decision was taken at the World Radio Communication Conference which the Chairman PTA also attended.

The World Radio Communication Conference (WRC-2007) in Geneva will address the use of radio frequencies and the global demand for spectrum fuelled by rapid technological developments and growth in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector.

WRC-07 will also deal with any radiocommunication questions with worldwide ramifications. The WRC-07 agenda focuses on some 30 items related to almost all terrestrial and space radio services and applications, including aeronautical telemetry and telecommand systems, satellite services, mobile communications including 3G services, maritime distress and safety signals, digital broadcasting, satellites for meterology, and the prediction and detection of natural disasters.

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.

Continuing the coverage of 3G and WiMAX, here’s a research paper by a grad student at Colorado University, which provides the point of view that 3G technologies have an edge over WiMAX. I wanted to share it to see what you think. For those who are interested in a detailed comparison, it is a good reference. Note that the context of the paper is North American market so the conclusions do not necessarily make sense for other markets such as Pakistan.

Here’s the source of the abstract, full paper is here.

There has been much conversation over the past few years regarding the evolution of next-generation air interfaces supporting mobile broadband. One of the most talked about as far as promise is concerned is 802.16e, otherwise known as mobile WiMAX. In its advertised form, the standard can support data rates of tens of megabits per second while supporting many real-time user applications that cannot be supported by third-generation technologies. Although mobile WiMAX sounds promising as a next-generation technology, other factors do exist which will limit its overall success. Some of the factors that will be discussed in this paper will include the design challenges facing base-station architecture, competing third-generation long-term evolution (LTE) technologies, and costs to existing service providers to upgrade their networks. This paper is meant to demonstrate that from a service-provider’s point-of-view, the upgrade path to mobile WiMAX may not be the correct solution.