State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

A recent poll on the frequency of use of GPRS/EDGE services among consumers revealed that data services users are few but increasing.

One thing is very clear, the mobile data usage can never match the voice usage. But I believe it still has a lot of room to grow. The operators with their attention on the voice users should also focus on the data services. We still lack in making the data services known to common masses. Operators can play a pivotal role here in awareness of the mobile data services.

When mobile phones came consumers were already aware of telephonic voice services and voice going mobile was appreciated by all and thus mobile gained popularity. But when SMS entered the market it wasn’t much appreciated because consumer were not really aware of its potential. In fact SMS was rarely used and was costly. But then some steps like making it free for limited time, reducing the cost, bringing in unlimited usage packages (bundles) made SMS an invincible necessity.

Now we have the GPRS/EDGE based data services which are not known by a majority of mobile users. The operators need to run a campaign first to educate the consumers of the potential use of data services and then make these services accessible for all.

A few ways I think this can be done:

1. Facebook Mobile. We have a huge base of Facebook users in Pakistan. Many of these users would use it from the mobile if  it was easy and cheap.
2. Email. Blackberrry aside, using email from other phones is not widespread yet. Awareness of Mobile Email clients needed.
3. Mobile Web and Content. This is one of the big things which iPhone accomplished but still needs to widespread.
4. Location Based Services. Maps, directions, local information, coupons based on your location.

All the latest mobile set support the mobile data services, awareness will make the  little shift in the mind-sets needed to boost these data services which will make room for 3G services.

This poll is an attempt to analyze how many mobile users actually use the GPRS/EDGE based data services provided by the networks.

Those who you use such services, share your views. And those who do not use, give reasons in comments.

We have all adored Warid’s Glow Package and now Warid brings another attraction for the prepaid tech savies – Prepaid GPRS Bucket. We had heard of SMS buckets but this thing is something new, perhaps a way the mobile industry gets a solution to the problem of rare data services usage by prepaid consumers. Allowing customers to pre-purchase the megabytes (or MBs like we call it) and top them off when the need arises.

Buy, use it all and buy again.

The offering is being positioned at a competitive price to facilitate prepaid customers for GPRS usage and allows a 30day validity period to the customer.The bucket gives the customer a total of 10MB of data capacity which has a validity of 30days from purchase. The customer is under complete freedom to procure a single or multiple buckets at any given time as required.

How to Subscribe:

To procure the GPRS Bucket from handset, the customer composes a message and sends the keyword “Data” to 3282.

Available for: The service is available for Prepaid customers with active GPRS services Only.

Subscription Charges: PKR 30 +tax

The wireless panorama is changing at a high-speed. Starting with the 1^st Generation of communication networks (1G) in the early 80s and many evolutions we now have 4^th Generation to talk about. In the last 3 years we have seen the deployments of 3G networks and most recently the work on 4G is on the peak.

From 1G to 4G we have seen changes in the modulation schemes, duplexing methods, multiple access technologies, data rate, speech coding, antenna systems and other aspects which have played a role to make communication efficient over the period of time.

But the question remains, do we need them? So much of an advancement of technology, has it really given us benefit in terms of both services and economics (cost) ?

Let’s take a look at each generation.

1^st Generation (1G) had the famous AMPS standard. It offered basic voice services with cost being high initially but went down with time.

2^nd Generation (2G) is well known for the GSM technology. It started off with offering digital voice services and then we had the short message service (SMS). The 2G changed the lives of many, it became impossible to live without a cell phone. Initially these services came with costs not in the range of average consumer but still gained popularity and the cost went down with time. Earlier a call received was charged, but today we have SMS packages, Friends and Family offer, One Free number offer and many more.

Then came the evolutions of 2G, we saw high speed data links on GPRS or EDGE. This laid the foundation of mobile internet. Once again the initial costs were high and it offered limited services. This evolution raised many questions on its actual need. Why need mobile internet with limited services when we have broadband or dial-ups at offices and homes? Although, these services are not as popular as SMS, but with time they have captured a small proportion of the population. Businesses today rely heavily on GPRS/EDGE to get online to check emails and act upon them immediately. Social networks are fast expanding on GPRS/EDGE, examples include facebook and twitter. With all this happening the cost again has gone down.

I would leave this post here for discussions and continue it later.

Nokia has proved that it can not only connect but care too. The press release below from Nokia below says it all.

The Indus Hospital Research Center and Nokia Pakistan announced the successful implementation of INTERACTIVE ALERTS, an electronic surveillance system for pneumonia in Karachi at a press conference held at the Indus Hospital. The Interactive Alerts system was designed by Interactive Research and Development (IRD), in collaboration with the Next Billion Network program at the MIT Media Lab.

The Interactive Alerts system has been specifically developed to use the Nokia 6131 NFC phone for childhood pneumonia surveillance and referral in low-resource settings, although it can be easily extended to other diseases. At the time of the 6-week vaccination visit, children are given a radio frequency ID (RFID) tag in the form of a traditional bracelet. This tag provides a unique ID to the child, and parents are advised and encouraged to take sick children to participating general practitioner clinics or general hospitals in the program. At each encounter, the Nokia 6131 NFC phone is used to scan the child’s tag. Pertinent immunization, clinical and laboratory data is collected and posted to the server via GPRS in real-time, and can be viewed over a secure website.

The innovativeness of this approach is that it helps overcome the challenges of disease tracking and patient referral in settings where medical records and referral systems do not exit. The RFID bracelet provides unique identification, allowing health workers to verify identity and view basic medical records, and respond to emergencies quickly.

Pneumonia is a leading cause of childhood death in countries with high under-5 mortality rates. Invasive pneumococcal disease is the # 1 vaccine-preventable cause of death in children under 5 years of age. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 1 million children under 5 die each year due to pneumococcal diseases.

IRD has established pneumonia surveillance in Karachi in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), the Program for Appropriate Technologies in Health (PATH) and the Indus Hospital. The objective of collecting this data is to provide policy makers in Pakistan and in the region the information required for introducing appropriate and new vaccines against pneumonia for children.

Interactive Alerts was co-developed by IRD’s health informatics team, led by Omar Allawala (Director of Information Technology) and Julia Irani (IT Project Manager),and a team of researchers and students from the Next Billion Network at MIT. The MIT team proposed the idea of using the Nokia NFC phones, and produced an initial design and working prototype, from which the IRD team then developed the final product.

Commenting on the project, Damien Balsan, Director, Head of NFC Business Development Americas, Nokia said, “We believe in a world where connecting people to what matters empower them to make the most of every moment. NFC is one of the ways to define the Nokia vision in terms of community services. We are committed to this project to ensure its expansion to a greater geographical area.”

This is a very encouraging step, finally we are seeing some research oriented approach in the communication industry  of Pakistan. In my view IRD should come up with more projects of similar kinds and get Pakistani students on board to work along. Such initiatives will in turn acheive the main objective of all communication devices, i.e. serving the humanity in a better way!

A new and interesting service by Zong to share media with others (for pre-paid and post-paid). You will need a GPRS enabled phone and GPRS activated for your mobile number.

TakeOne is a service by Zong which enables mobile users to share their photos and videos by:

Sending to any mobile in the world
Sending to various online destinations – Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa
Sending to any email address

Take One is the answer to the PicShare service by Telenor. Nokia has also introduced the Ovi service.
This is a direct competition for the popular sharing and social network services.The trend is fast moving from PCs to phones and operators like Zong want to be the service provider.

The service is supposed to be easy — you take a picture and you get a prompt on whether you want to send / share that. However depending on the user this kind of prompt may be a convenience or annoyance. Overall the usability of the application will be a major factor in its success.

Subscription charges are Rs.25+tax per month and you can share unlimited photos and videos. Data (GPRS) charges are applicable to this service.

Click below to get details on how to subscribe.
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