New data from TeleGeography’s 4G Research Service show that there were more than 600 WiMAX networks either live or at the planning/deployment stage by the end of 2009. The number of WiMAX deployments significantly exceeds HSPA and LTE deployments. Only around 300 cellular networks have been upgraded with HSPA technology and fewer than 70 operators have committed to deploying LTE equipment. However one point is note worthy: a relatively small number of these WiMAX systems offer wide coverage areas; most only offer local or regional service. This is certainly true for Pakistan!

Telecard has been in licensing disputes earlier and is now again as PTA suspends the WiMax commencement certificate of Telecard Limited. This takes Qubee’s future at stake as Qubee (brand name of Augere) for operating WiMax services uses Telecard’s spectrum and licenses. Daily times reports the details.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday suspended the commencement certificate of Telecard Limited.

The PTA took interim action in respect of their WLL licences, which were being used in conjunction with the 3.5GHz wireless spectrum by Augere Pakistan for supporting their new wireless broadband service launched in Karachi by the name of Qubee.

In response to an order of the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench, PTA took this action, pending further investigation and proceedings against Telecard Limited.

Justice Asad Munir of the LHC, Rawalpindi bench in his order on a writ petition filed by another telecommunication operator directed the PTA to ensure that Augere Pakistan is not allowed to offer any telecommunication services as are in violation of the licensing requirements of the Pakistan Telecommunication (re-organisation) Act, 1996 and the rules framed there under.

PTA had recently confirmed before the LHC in another matter that it had not given any permission to Telecard to assign its wireless spectrum or permit its use by any third party. However, it seems that Telecard without the sanction of PTA did allow Augere to use the spectrum and licences in violation of regulatory restrictions.

Augere is the third entrant in the broadband Wimax market under the Qubee brand but it does not have a WLL licence and is using Telecard’s licences and spectrum to offer these services, which have now been seriously questioned in the pending writ before the LHC.

The matter is now fixed for February 25 for further proceedings.

There has been a lot of debate and discussion about LTE and WiMAX standards. The battle has been played at different levels: geography, countries, telecom equipment makers, network operators etc. LTE has certainly picked up a lot wins but as this WSJ report shows both LTE and WiMAX are widening their foothold.

Though WiMax does have some momentum, LTE is expected to be the broadband standard of choice for most wireless-service providers. The two technologies have similar capabilities, but LTE has less upfront costs for carriers since it can be built on top of existing network infrastructure.

Now that Long Term Evolution is shaping up to be the wireless broadband standard of choice for the U.S. and most developed markets, start-ups building silicon for wireless consumer devices are pushing out chips for the standard.

One such company, Altair Semiconductor Ltd., began sampling its Long Term Evolution, or LTE, chips in September, according to Eran Eshed, its vice president of marketing and business development.

For Altair, which continues to sell WiMax chips, it was more an expansion than a shift. From its beginnings, the company’s management expected significant changes to the broadband wireless landscape, so it designed a chip that could be altered to be used with multiple wireless platforms, Mr. Eshed said.

Founded in 2005, Altair built its first products for the WiMax standard since it had the most traction at the time, but the promise of large WiMax buildouts never really came about and the company has generated little revenue from those products, Mr. Eshed said.

That’s not to say a lack of success with WiMax is solely driving the move toward LTE.

Sequans Communications SA, a competitor to Altair, was able to generate $23 million in revenue from its WiMax products last year. The Paris company recently raised a new round of capital from Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola Ventures to build samples of its LTE products, which it expects to ship at the beginning of the year.

On the back of a $9.5 million round in February from investors that include BDC Venture Capital, Solidarity Fund QFL and Multiple Capital, Wavesat began sampling its first LTE chip last month. The company is raising $12 million to get those chips into production by March, said Raj Singh, the company’s chief executive.

Like Altair, Wavesat has developed a chip architecture that can be reprogrammed to multiple standards, so it isn’t banking on LTE alone.

Expanding into the LTE market isn’t simple; it brings multiple new challenges that didn’t exist in the WiMax market.

For one, these companies will be going head-to-head with two established chip companies, Qualcomm Inc. and ST-Ericsson, with more likely to enter the market later. In the WiMax market, the competition was mostly other start-ups, which were selling to smaller vendors and carriers, Mr. Eshed said.

When compared with cellular phone growth, Broadband has been slow to take off in Pakistan. However the last two years show some progress  in terms of growth (a little over 20K subscribers per month), more choices of services in more places and most importantly a significant drop in cost for broadband access (~Rs.1200 per month on average). Another welcome trend is to move towards unlimited broadband.

PTCL has taken the lead with its DSL and EVO offerings while WorldCall, Mobilink Infinity, Wateen / WiMAX, Qubee,  NayaTel and Wi-Tribe have also offered their services.

According to PTA, “broadband subscriber base grew by 146% adding 245,727 subscribers during July 2008 – June 2009, while broadband connection charges for 1Mbps connection dropped below Rs. 1000. There were 413,809 Broadband subscribers in June 2009 as compared to 168,082 in June of 2008.”

At the current rate of broadband growth we can cross the half-million mark by December 2009. We need to get to 1 million much faster.

Daily Times recently wrote about broadband, excerpt below.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s (SDPI) Study Group on Information Technology and Telecommunication in its 56th meeting discussed the problems that hinder broadband growth in Pakistan. Relevant stakeholders participated in the meeting. Wahaj ul Siraj of NayaTel and Zamir Bhatti of Wi-tribe reviewed the existing policy and infrastructure sharing issues.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Ijaz Shafi Gilani, Chairman Gallup Pakistan.

Since a major portion of the infrastructure is owned by the PTCL and is reluctant to share it with other service providers, therefore, the latter have to built their own infrastructure, which is an immense waste of national resources. Neither the Ministry of IT and Telecom (MoIT) has provided any policy guidelines nor the Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) has been able to break PTCL’s monopoly, which is harming other operators.

Although the PTA has constituted broadband stakeholders group to facilitate solution to the problems that hinder rapid expansion of broadband subscribers’ base but unless ministry of IT play an effective role along with the PTA is made stronger and fully autonomous, broadband penetration in Pakistan is like to be slow. Despite the good move by the government to mandate Universal Service Fund (USF) to built infrastructures in unserved areas of Pakistan with huge allocation of funds’ and the USF’s endeavor to play its role, the security situation in these areas of Balochistan is adversely impacting its otherwise useful work. Despite these difficulties, USF plans to achieve 1 percent broadband penetration by 2010. staff report

Wateen and Naksha.pk have partnered to provide an interactive WiMax coverage map at www.naksha.pk/wateen.  You can choose a city and available point of interest (POI) from the drop-downs at the very top right. You may also click on the map to choose the POI. Once you have made these selections, the site will give you coverage info at the top in terms of availability indoor or outdoor. Neat but a few quick fixes are needed.

I have 2 suggestions for improvement. The interactive map page should have links back to the Wateen site. Second, the WiMAX availability information is displayed towards the top without proper context and help text. At first glance, it is hard to tell where the results are and what is their meaning. There should be annotation to explain the meaning of terms listed below.
USB: Available/Unavailable
Ground Floor: Available/Unavailable
1st Floor: Available/Unavailable
Outdoor: Available/Unavailable

Here are two sample views from  www.naksha.pk/wateen, showing coverage in cities of Lahore and Quetta. I’d suggest playing with the site and observing how the WiMAX coverage varies from area to area. You might find some interesting patterns!

For Lahore.

For Quetta.

SNR Labs develops technology to solve Quality of Experience (QoE) issues seen in the fast-growing segment of mobile devices with multiple radios, such as, cellular, WiFi, WiMAX. The software also handles power management. Today I talked with the co-founder of SNR Labs who informed me that  SNR Labs has recently signed an agreement to provide Advanced Connection Management Suite for Intel’s next generation platforms. Watch this demo video.

Qubee – ‘An Augere Brand’, we discussed earlier, have now been officially launched in Karachi. Qubee has become the fourth player offering WiMAX services in Karachi, the other three being Wateen, Mobilink Infinity and Wi-tribe. The website says that services also are expected to be launched in Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad and Quetta in 2009.

Qubee Packages

Qubee offers variety of packages to home users.

Business users have a chance to customize their package on basis of their needs using the qubee tariff planner.

For more information visit their website here.

Wateen has launched the WOW Packages. As reported by industry insider at TGP, here are the detailed new prices. These prices, if correct, are quite impressive. It looks like no cap, unlimited Internet is becoming an affordable reality in Pakistan. I am sure people will debate the download speeds and performance but offers like these give consumers a chance to compare and choose. Package details are below.

Monthly Charges
1Mbps: Unlimited Rs.1,399. 10GB Rs.1,099. 5GB Rs.699.
512kbps: Unlimited Rs.1,299. 10GB Rs. 999. 5GB Rs.599.
256kbps: Unlimited Rs.1,199. 10GB Rs. 899. 5GB Rs. 499.

One Time Fee (Including CPE)
1 Mbps:    Rs. 1,000/- with zero security
512 kbps: Rs. 1,000/- with zero security
256 kbps: Rs. 1,500/- with zero security

Notes:
1. Available both on pre-paid and post-paid.
2. In case of post-paid, security against credit limit of Rs.2000 will remain the same.
3. The promotion (mentioned here) will start from August 14th, 2009 and end on August 31st, 2009, both dates inclusive.
4. The new upfront will be applicable on rental model only.

Wateen is also offering UPS (750va) in Rs. 1000/- with new connection.

Wateen Telecom is a sister concern of Warid Telecom and a fully owned venture of Abu Dhabi Group. Wateen, with the collaboration of Motorola, deployed nation-wide WiMAX network in Pakistan and pioneered its deployment globally (actually this was the very first post on this blog in 2006). I remember attending the ITCN in August 2007 when it was launched with a zeal of making Broadband a reality and promising exceptional quality over WiMAX.  Now, after two years, it is rather sad that Wateen has laid off around 550 employees.

What went wrong with Wateen that it had to let go of around 50% of its employees?

Few of my friends had an opportunity to do internship at the RAN Department of Wateen. When they joined on day 1, they were handed a some vendor manuals to study. At the end of the day I called them up to ask how did their day go? They told me that Wateen has more people than work. I said that you can’t decide this in just one day.

Now with this 50% slash in number of employees the picture is clear, they did have more employees than needed. This could be because they hired more manpower during the initial network roll-out. Now what they have on their lists is some upgradation and O&M of the current network. The O&M is outsourced to the vendor and upgrades generally requires less manpower . So the ‘more manpower’ was just not needed.

I leave here for the reader to decide. Did this happen because of the global recession or mismanagement by Wateen’s senior management?

Wateen has signed a contract to set-up a Wateen WIFI Zone including a state of the art online gaming facility at the prestigious Royal Palm Golf and Country Club, which is spread over 140 acres of land and offers a serene backdrop for business, pleasure and social interaction and can now keep members connected to online media through high speed internet connectivity over WIMAX.

Through this first-of-its-kind collaborative effort, Wateen will enable Club members and guests to seamlessly connect to the Internet through Wateen’s Wifi deployment there allowing professionals to remain connected to their business and workplaces, remotely.

Some of Pakistan’s most distinguished professionals frequent the Royal Palm Golf Club and it is important that they can stay in touch with their businesses on a regular basis. The Internet plays a critical role in our lives and by enabling the Wateen WIFI zone at this Club, we are only advancing our commitment to increasing the accessibility to the Web and ease of communication for everyone across Pakistan.

Tariq Malik

CEO, Wateen Telecom

[via BR]