State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Braintel has completed a full circle regarding its fight with PTA. A few weeks ago Braintel sent an email to its customers with an attachment which showed that the services have been restored based on a decision by the High Court. That is good news for expat Pakistanis. However the letter also asked customers to make changes to their account setting.  I am sharing the process of getting your Braintel line working again:

1. On the device settings, you need to change UserID and AuthID so that 210, the first three digits of the ID are changed to 1001 (four digits). That is, 210-####  changes to 1001-####.
2. Call customer service (2100786 from braintel. 0092-42-2100786 or 0044-1785-800786 otherwise) and make sure that your number is provisioned properly. It may take a while for the change to become effective.
3. Use the call back procedure explained here.

For those who use Linksys PAP2 device, see the setting changes in the screenshot below.

Rates at the time of this post are reasonable – probably the main reason why tens of thousands of customers put up with the service instability and changes!

• Lahore Local: Rs 0.90+Taxes
• Fixed Line and WLL Nation Wide: Rs 2.0+Taxes
• Local and Nation Wide mobile network: Rs 2.75+Taxes

BrainTel LDI license has been suspended by PTA. Is this the final chapter in the short but adventurous life of the famous 210-nnnn series?

A few years ago someone in Lahore showed me how they could dial a local number (210-nnnn) from Lahore and connect directly to U.S. After a bit of investigation I also signed up for the service. It wasn’t a very consistent or reliable service but having a local number was very convenient. And when it worked, the VOIP technology was absolutely wonderful and very affordable. Soon this service came under the radar and many times it came to the brink of being closed. This time it seems that it is gone for good. It was fun while it lasted.

The dispute between PTA and Braintel (as described in the pdf document) can be the topic of many posts and shows the internal strifes of the LDI industry. Braintel has some bitter complaints agains the ‘cartel’ and how the price of calls to Pakistan are set up.

Here’s one excerpt which shows the point of view of “The Authority”.

The Authority, through the Traffic Monitoring Facility installed for the purpose, noted that (i) it has during the period from 14th May, 2008 to 30th June, 2008, unauthorizedly originated 450,814 international telephony minutes (accounting for 65,482 international telephony calls) and terminated those minutes in different countries through IP address 119.63.130.98 by using SIP over non-standard port 8891 (ii) from 14th May, 2008 to 30th June, 2008 it has also unauthorizedly terminated 2,442,779 international telephony minutes (accounting for 339,917 international telephony calls) in Pakistan through IP address 119.63.130.98 by using SIP over non-standard port 8891 and (iii) the licensee has been using its locally allocated numbers for the Lahore Region (N/S) outside Pakistan by misusing Direct Inward Dialing technique and by mapping its numbers against IP addresses, hence, these numbers are being used globally and more than 50,000 customers of the licencee are using
these numbers in around 77 countries.

Please note the changes mentioned below, as posted on the Braintel website. All Braintel users, please test this beta release and share your feedback on the newly introduced “extra step” which is needed to complete the outgoing call. I am thankful that the service is functional and will monitor it over the next few days for issues, quality and performance.

We are please to inform you that the service has been fully functional now as of 8th Sep 2008 (2:40pm PKT Daylight ). To avoid misuse of our service by grey service provider, we have made a small amendment in the service. We are introducing Computer Assisted Dialing system (CAD) that will help us to overcome the misuse of our service.

In CAD system you have to dial your destination number just the way you used to dial before 4th August 2008; after dialing your destination number press # key and wait for few sec and then simply hang-up the line; your phone will ring back within 45sec and you’ll be hooked with your dialed number.

If the destination number is busy, conventionally you have to try again and again, in CAD system you don’t have to dial again and again but our CAD system will do the rest, just the way a private secretary or your company’s telephone operator make the call on your behalf.

CAD system is new and unique; you may experience some intermittent disconnections during its beta testing.