State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Transfers of large amounts of data across the Internet to wireless devices suffer from a major problem: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used to send and receive that data can be unnecessarily slow. Aspera, a new company, has now announced an alternative protocol designed to accelerate wireless transfer speeds. Called fasp-AIR, it includes new proprietary approaches to addressing problems of data transfer that are unique to wireless communications.

This story appeared at Technology Review.

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Research and Market, the world’s largest market research resource have recently published forecast reports of next five years for mobile operators of Pakistan and other countries. The key points of the report as mentioned in its summary give a very interesting picture of the state of telecom industry in Pakistan.

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A recent article in Technology Review provides an interesting account of a wireless network that uses reflected infrared light instead of radio waves. This wireless network has transmitted data through the air at a speed of one gigabit per second–six to 14 times faster than the fastest Wi-Fi network.

Such optical networks could provide faster, more secure communications and would be especially suitable for use in hospitals, aircraft, and factories, where radio-frequency transmission can interfere with navigation equipment, medical devices, or control systems. Another possible application is wireless networking for home theaters; a system that transmits data at 1.6 gigabits per second could broadcast two separate high-definition TV channels across a room, a capacity that exceeds the bandwidth of any existing radio system. Read more »

Wireless Local Loop (WLL) growth slowed down in 2009 significantly. In December, the overall number for WLL dropped after a long time. PTCL which has the major market share, lost 56,000 subscribers in December. Wateen, on the other hand, almost doubled its customer base to 151K . Here are the stats for 2009, from PTA.

We often talk about 3G and the reasons why its important. One of the common need is for small groups to work together while on the move or in places where they don’t have broadband or WiFi hot spots. Wireless internet access of your own is what you need. MiFi is a pocket-sized router/modem made by Novatel Wireless that converts a 3G signal to Wi-Fi.

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Here are the key highlights of the PTA Report for Pakistan telecom industry for fiscal year 2008-09 (July 2008 -  June 2009) issued* on Friday.

Highlights

• Telecom sector revenue grew by 20 percent and generated Rs 327.8 billion as revenue
• Telecom sector paid Rs 112 billion as tax
• Tele-density (percentage of mobile users) of Pakistan stood at 62 percent showing a growth rate of 5.4 percent.
• Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stood at 815 million dollar
• Total investments in the sector stood at 1.7 billion dollar
• Telecom imports also grew by 20 percent and reached 1.6 billion dollar Read more »

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.

AT&T estimated that wireless data growth on its network expanded 4,932% between the third quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2009, thanks to iPhone users. The surge in wireless data consumption has forced the carriers to look at all the options which can reduce the load on their networks. Wi-Fi (aka WLAN) and in-building wirless networks are important in this regard. A recent WSJ article talks about companies – InnerWireless and SpiderCloud which provide in-building wirless networks solutions.

One Silicon Valley start-up, SpiderCloud Wireless Inc., is introducing technology next week to take over the job of delivering either cellular or Wi-Fi signals to the smart phones or laptops of workers in the office.

The performance improvement is so dramatic, SpiderCloud executives claim, that some customers might choose to dispense with desk phones—letting employees rely on cellphones alone.

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Here are excerpts from a recent article which expressed concerns about mobile data pricing going from a simple fixed price (as offered to iPhone users in the US currently) to a more elaborate usage-based model. As an example, iPhone users get all you can use data plan for $30 which is competitive. I recently ran a poll on data usage and its results showed that many smartphone users in Pakistan consume over 100MB data each month.

Consider: A single YouTube viewing consumes nearly 100 times as much cellular bandwidth as a voice call. In Asia, some 200 million people already watch video on their smartphones. No wonder Google (whose YouTube unit serves up one billion videos a day) is an investor in a new undersea fiber line connecting North America to the Far East.

More omens: Data collector AdMob reports that mobile Web page requests grew 9% from July to August—a 180% annual growth rate. And Motorola recently went public with worries that a handful of mobile Slingbox users (a video streaming device) could wipe out cell service in a whole neighborhood.

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Cross Post from LIRNE Asia. Written by Rohan Samarajiva on October 24, 2009.

According to the ITU ICTeye, which is now carrying 2008 data, Pakistan’s surge to overtake Sri Lanka has petered out, leaving the Maldives (143 active SIMs/100 people) as the undisputed leader in mobile connectivity (apparently all adult Maldivians carry two active SIMs; there are only two operators in the Maldives), and Sri Lanka second with 52 SIMs per 100 people.

On the fixed side, assisted by CDMA phones that are counted as fixed, Sri Lanka is the leader (17 connection per 100 people), followed by Maldives (15 per 100).

Like in cricket, the middle of the rankings are the most interesting. Both Pakistan (50/100) and Bhutan (37/100) are ahead of India (29/100) in mobile. This shows that India cannot afford to let up the pace of 10 million connections a month for some time. If it does, it might be overtaken by Afghanistan (29/100) and even Bangladesh (28/100).

Of course, the fact that Afghanistan is ahead of Bangladesh in mobile penetration should cause all sorts of palpitations in government offices in Dhaka. Bangladesh was one of the earliest in South Asia to adopt mobile and is the most densely populated country in the world. How they were overtaken by Afghanistan, a war-torn country with difficult terrain, should cause serious re-examination of policies such as the BDT 800 SIM tax. The fact that Afghanistan’s CAGR for 2003-08 is 109%, higher than Bangladesh’s 2003-08 CAGR of 101%, suggests that the gap between the two countries is more likely to increase than decrease.

In the fixed rankings, we find Afghanistan occupying the cellar (0.37/100 people) behind Bangladesh (0.84/100). Pakistan (2.5/100) is behind Nepal (2.8/100). This is very surprising given the apparent superiority of the Pakistan policy and regulatory framework. Both use CDMA on the fixed access side, so that cannot be the explanation. Comments from Pakistani colleagues would be most welcome.

India is the only country showing negative growth in fixed over the 2003-08 period (-2%), but this simply because India is more honest in its reporting, counting CDMA on the mobile side instead of on the fixed side. For example Sri Lanka is experiencing negative growth in wireline, that is masked by CDMA growth.

From 2003 to 2008, the number of active SIMs has increased by over 12 times, while the number of fixed connections has decreased marginally, the negative growth in India wiping out all the gains in the rest of South Asia. South Asia is clearly the territory of the mobile.

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.

Via InformationWeek

Verizon Wireless is planning to light up its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) nationwide network next year in one fell swoop rather than deploying it in a traditional market-by-market rollout, according to Tony Melone, the firm’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.

In the interview, in the wake of his talk on Verizon Wireless’ LTE project this week at the 2009 PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show, Melone described the move to LTE from Verizon’s existing CDMA EV-DO network as an “overlay” and not a “switchover.” He added that the LTE network is able to use much of the existing infrastructure of the CDMA network including towers and backhaul gear.
Melone also discussed what consumers can expect from the new LTE network. “You will need new devices to take [full] advantage of LTE,” he said. “But there won’t be a need to force migrate” The carrier’s CTO explained that existing Verizon Wireless users will be able to continue to use their current devices and handsets after LTE is commercially launched.

LTE will enable traditional-type handsets and PDAs, but also some non-traditional devices like the IREX Technologies e-book reader, GM’s OnStar auto security solution, and even court-ordered electronic bracelets. Melone noted that Verizon has certified more than 55 devices to operate on its 3G network and they will be available also for use with the LTE network. Most of them are machine-to-machine (M2M) units.

The company, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications (55%) and Vodafone Group (45%), has launched trial sites in suburban Boston and suburban Seattle. The Verizon LTE Innovation Center in suburban Boston is nearly completed, Melone added.

In his PCIA talk this week, Melone sought to scotch rumors that his firm’s LTE rollout is falling behind schedule. In the interview, he maintained that deployment is on schedule. The firm, however, hasn’t yet given specific dates on its nationwide deployment, but it has pledged it will happen in 2010 in 25 to 30 markets. The company will seek to have the service available for some 100 million POPs (points of presence) in 2010 and continue to deploy the network over the next two and three years.

Melone said Verizon’s Developer Community and its V CAST Apps will launch by the end of the year, enabling developers to take advantage of the launch to bring their own products and services to market.

“We can build all the bells and whistles and make lots of bold claims,” said Melone, “but none of it will matter if the network — and all of the underlying infrastructure that supports the network — isn’t fundamentally reliable. There will be no substitute for good old-fashioned engineering. Reliability built in at the start based on rigid engineering standards and a disciplined approach year-after-year will continue to be our mantra.”