State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

In the era where communication panorama is changing fast and furious and have made distances ever shorter this news about the Indian authorities alerting mobile subscribers to avoid calling Pakistan comes as a distress. The Daily Mail gives out the details.

At a time when revolution in telecom is bringing the world together by providing instant communication access over long distances, Indian Government has launched an SMS (Short Massages Service) campaign to discourage its population from making calls to Pakistan.

The information collected by The Daily Mail indicate that since Jan 21, 2010 an SMS is being received on the mobile phones to exercise extra care while calling anyone in Pakistan. Whenever a call is made to Pakistan, the caller receives an SMS; “You just made a call to ISD Code 0092 (Pakistan’s international dialing code). We urge you to exercise caution while calling unknown number and sharing personal details as it can be misused”.

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We had recently talked about Telecordia facing a hard time for its entry in India and facing scrutiny by Indian government. As mentioned earlier, Telenor also had to go through this. The latest is that Telecordia will be getting entry on the same conditions entry Telenor was allowed. The excerpts of the news item from The Economic Times gives the details.

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This WSJ article on Telcordia shows how telecom is also getting caught up in the intense politics of South Asia. Telcordia had helped with mobile number portability and now that has come under scrutiny by Indian government. Quite funny. We had heard the same kind of concerns about Telenor. Is this an isolated instance or does this mean more trouble for telecom vendors who are doing business in South Asia?

Telcordia Technologies Inc. sold its software to several cellphone companies in Pakistan a few years ago, just as it has done in 14 other countries. Now that fact is making life difficult for the U.S. company in Pakistan’s archrival, India. Telcordia makes back-end software for wireless and fixed-line networks.

Millions of Indian cellphone users are awaiting the chance to switch wireless providers while keeping the same phone number. Telcordia, which is based in Piscataway, N.J., was one of two companies the Indian government selected to provide crucial services to carriers in the transition to so-called number portability.

But in recent months, India’s Home Ministry has raised objections that partnering with Telcordia could compromise national security, effectively putting the company’s plans on hold.

The Indian ministry noted its concerns that Telcordia “has presence in Pakistan,” according to notes from a January meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the government body that reviews foreign investments.

Read more about this after the break.

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Telenor Group’s Indian mobile operation, Uninor, today announced the launch of its mobile services in seven Indian telecom circles, making it the largest single day launch in the telecom history. On the first day of service Uninor will cover a footprint of close to 600 million people. Its interesting to note the organizational mode and the marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy
Uninor will leverage from Telenor Group’s established marketing and design framework. As in several other markets where the Telenor Group is present, the brand follows Telenor’s brand strategy, combining the global position of the Telenor Group with a distinct local identity. Uninor’s tagline is “Ab mera number hai” or “My time is now”, set to target the young and ambitious individuals.

Organizational Model

Uninor has established an organizational model, utilizing the unique extend of infrastructure sharing and large degree of outsourcing services available in India. With extensive use of outsourcing, Uninor has created a fast, flexible and efficient model for future growth. Jon Fredrik Baksaas said:

The Indian organizational model represents a new and innovative approach to setting up a light and cost-efficient telecom operation. I believe that Uninor’s organizational approach will make them faster and more agile than a traditional mobile operator.

The Uninor launch also represents the largest ever distribution at launch by any operator in India. From the start, Uninor will be retailed at over 210,000 points of sale through close to 1000 exclusive distributors in the seven circles. Uninor services will also be available in 17 exclusive company owned shops and 50 exclusive franchisee shops.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is doing great in its 668 Campaign to wipe-off illegal SIMs, but what about the illegal mobile handsets? When I say illegal cell phones, it means cell phones without a valid IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity usually China made.

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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.

As discussed earlier of a possible acquisition of Telenor Pakistan by China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak) possibly to let Telenor get a green signal to enter the India.

The lastest news is that India is set to grant Telenor the necessary security clearance to increase its stake in Unitech Wireless to the legal maximum of 74% – but only on the condition that no employees from Telenor’s Pakistan subsidiary work for the Indian company.

The Economic Times newspaper notes that the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was due to approve the investment, but delayed its decision pending a review of the security situation. Keeping the human assets of the Indian and Pakistani arms of Telenor separate is expected to take care of risks such as spying and subversion. The plan is reported to require that any Telenor employee who is, or has ever worked in Pakistan will be blocked from working in India.

At one end the leadership of India are on talk tables to increase trade and grow relations with Pakistan, whereas at the same time imposing ban on employees who is or has ever worked in Telenor Pakistan to work in India.

With this ban Telenor Pakistan’s CEO, Jon Eddy Abdullah, a non Pakistani and other foreigners associated with Telenor Pakistan will also not be allowed to work in India.

Telenor is also a majority shareholder in Bangladesh’s Grameenphone, but this was not considered to be such a significant security risk.

A cross post from Basit’s Blog

Nokia life tools have been running as a pilot in Indian state of Maharashtra. Nokia has announced the commercial launch of these tools in Maharashtra today. This service will run in this state for now and will spread further to the other parts of the country later. Life-tools is a combination of entertainment, information, education and agriculture services in the emerging markets.

The idea is to have applications running on common, low cost phones that is owned by the greater number of users in small towns and remote areas and the focus of the applications is to make the life of the users easier one way or another.

Here are a few shots from the agriculture related application. You can have more information about these applications here.

The biggest challenge in such cases is to bring information and updates to the users from the very local market and the changes should reflect the happenings around them, for example market prices, weather, irrigation related details etc.

That is why the service has been launched in a limited area, and will grow over time. Nokia has recently been concentrating on these so-called emerging markets like India and Pakistan where the telecom market has been growing exponentially resulting in very high sales of handsets.

Cross Post From Basit Ali’s blog

As its past midnight in India, the mobile phone users all over the country are afraid if their mobile will continue to work or not?

According to this post on Mobile Messaging 2, chinese mobile handset manufacturers have flooded indian market with 25 million handsets that do not have a unique IMEI. This means, the handset is absolutely anonymous and according to the Indian government, these anonymous handsets can be used by the terrorists or can be utilized in illegal activities.

Therefore the handsets should be blocked, i.e should not work on any network in India. 25 million is a dazzling large number and even if half of these sets are actually disabled, it will be a total chaos. It’s reported that here are 15 to 18 million users of such handsets in India. Once these handsets stop picking the mobile signal, some users will stop using a mobile till they have enough money to buy a new one and others will instantly buy a new phone. In both cases, phones with proper IMEI will see a rise in their sales in a couple of months to follow.

I’m sure there will be lots of these sets still in transit or in sales stores. All these shipments will become useless junk of plastic and circuitry. Businessmen owning these sets have to evaluate, should they sell them to another country where such restriction isn’t in place yet, or the cost of re-exporting is too high and its better to simply throw them away? In any case, its not a good news.

We have seen similar regulations being implemented in the region in the name of security improvements. For example in Pakistan, PTA has made it mandatory for every mobile-connection to be registered and associated with a person’s national ID number. This, no doubt, ensures legal use of cell-phone connections and discourage terrorists from using them or at least improving the traceability of calls during an investigation.

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The winners for the Global Mobile Awards 2009 are:

Best Mobile Game

Gameloft: Real Football 2009

Best Mobile Music or Video Service

BBC: BBC iPlayer on Mobile

Best Mobile Advertising Service

Turkcell: Tonla Kazan

Best Mobile TV Service

MobiTV: MobiTV

Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service

Vodafone: Vodafone Global Enterprise  Limited

Best Mobile Internet Service

Nokia: Nokia Sports Tracker

Best Mobile Money Service

Safaricom and Vodafone: M-PESA

The GSMA Chairman’s Award

RIM

CEO Environment Award

Nokia

GSMA’s Government Leadership Award

The Government of France
Best Mobile Handset or Device

INQ: INQ1

Best Broadcast Commercial

KT Freetel: Show is …..

Best Mobile Brand Campaign

R/GA London: Nokia Urbanista Diaries

Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development

Nuance Communications: Airtel-T9 India Consumer Vernacular Messaging Campaigns

Best Network Technology Advance

Nokia Siemens Networks: Flexi Multimode BTS Software defined HSPA/LTE

Best Service Delivery Platform

NewBay Software: LifeCache Social Networking Solution 2.0

Best Billing or Customer Care Solution

Expert System: COGITO Answers

Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough

RIM:BlackBerry Storm 9500 SurePress Screen

Green Mobile Award

Smart Communications: Alternative Power for Cell Sites program

Via Global Mobile Awards.

Telenor had communicated in December 2008 that closing of the Unitech Wireless transaction in India would take place during January. Completion of the transaction is now expected to take place during the first quarter of 2009. Closing is subject to certain conditions being fulfilled such as agreements for infrastructure sharing that will allow a swift and cost-efficient rollout.

A quick roundup of the major market news and trends from the Indian telecom market.

• Japan’s DoCoMo pays $2.7 billion for 26% stake in Tata Teleservices
• iPhone not doing that well in India – Nokia and others are too well entrenched in India and China.
• Getting ready for 3G licences – but at what price? PTA must be watching this closely.
• WiMAX plans are not clear though  – Is Pakistan way ahead on WiMAX commercial deployments?
• Mobile marketing is booming – Ad Traffic soared to make India the number 3 in ad impressions. Various mobile ad companies have entered the market.
• India happens to be a battleground for Mobile banking and will serve as a key case study for the future of mobile commerce.

The biggest news is that NTT deal paid about $100m for 1 percentage stake in Tata Teleservices, which has mobile base of 27 million. The Japanese telecom giant NTT had been looking for international diversification. This shows that emerging telecom markets are still quite attractive.