State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Guest Post by Murtaza Fazal

Windows 7 was released for retail distribution earlier today. The launch event started at around 9 a.m. at Sheraton Hotel, Karachi. The event witnessed presence of not only leading IT personals but also corporate guests from Telecom and Banking Industry. The chairperson HEC was also part of the event. The best part of event was the separate corner for bloggers with online laptops to blog and tweet the event live as it happened.

Find below, a pictorial peek of the event.

Murtaza is a Final year Computer Science student at FAST-NU (Karachi). He is also the Vice-Chairperson of the IEEE-NUCES Computer Society. He can be reached at murtaza [dot] fazal [at] gmail.com

Warid Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd. the country’s most reliable service provider has always been on forefront in deploying the latest technology, partnering with the Worlds top class vendors like Oracle, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.

Warid has recently commenced an outstanding project of implementing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. This initiative was taken as part of Microsoft’s early adoption Program for this cutting edge virtualization technology. Warid Telecom was amongst the pioneer customers in the MEA region in implementing VDI solution under this program.

Microsoft held a commercial launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 in Pakistan. The event was held in Sheraton Hotel Karachi on 22nd October 2009. It is the largest outreach to IT Decision Makers, IT Professionals and Developers in Microsoft’s history. Warid Telecom is awarded with Gold Sponsorship and an honorary shield was given to Warid’s Chief Information Officer. Microsoft has also developed a case study taking a detailed account on Warid Pakistan, and it will be published on Microsoft’s global website.

While speaking on the event Javed Mushtaq, Chief Information Officer, Warid Telecom said , “We expect a 20 percent drop in our capital expenditure and a 62 percent drop in operating expenses by cutting power, support, and hardware costs with the Hyper-V solution.”

Microsoft Country Head Kamal Ahmed said “The launch of such a powerful product portfolio showcases Microsoft’s commitment to our customer’s top priority and seeks to enhance cost savings, IT efficiency and business productivity. Companies in Pakistan can use these products to not only drive costs down but also drive down their risk profile through better security and compliance, while maximizing the productivity of the workforce they support”

With this project, Warid Telecom taken a leap forward in carbon emissions, honoring its part in keeping the planet greener thus takes another initiative for environment friendly green technology. Total Power Consumption is reduced by 180% with annual saving of 215,280 KW/Y from power and Total Air Conditioning Saving per Year: 160,030 KW/Y, also Carbon Emission Saving per Year: of 581730 Pound.

[via Press Release]

Microsoft announced My Phone beta has been opened to the public. This is a free service (requires data plan, obviously) which helps you with saving your phone data online including contacts. This comes as Windows mobile is pushing for more user adoption with Total Access and offers for more applications and tips to get more done.

Your Microsoft My Phone account gives you 200 MB of free storage on the Microsoft My Phone web site. The default setting provides a daily sync of information but you can also back up your data manually at any time by selecting Sync in the Microsoft My Phone application on your phone.

Here is an interesting question: How does MSN, Live Search, Windows Live compare against the word Google? This confusion about branding was pointed out in a Wall Street Journal blog. For those of you who are starting out with their products or work as a brand / product manager for a company, this is a very important point. You want to make it easy for your users, not difficult. Verizon is another example. This company does not offer one number to reach its sales / service. There are many different toll free numbers — some are used for tracking promotions, others to differentiate between departments (TV vs Internet). To consumers, the reason does not matter. Its the brand which suffers. Can you cite similar examples from Pakistan telecom industry?

During regular “blind taste tests,” in which Microsoft asks randomly-selected consumers to score the quality of results from various Internet search engines, the quality of Microsoft’s search results have so improved that people can’t tell the difference between Microsoft and Google search results, says Mr. Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group. But when Microsoft slaps the Google brand name on the results from Microsoft’s own search engine during another portion of its tests, users invariably score them highest.

“Just by putting the name up, people think it’s more relevant,” he says.

Although improving its search technology has been a top priority, Mr. Mehdi concedes that another big problem for Microsoft has been a confusing jumble of brand names for its search efforts. The company’s search engine, available at Live.com, is called Live Search, though the brand is muddied by the plethora of other Microsoft Internet services such as Xbox Live and Windows Live. Mr. Mehdi says the company is looking for ways to “clarify” the brand for its search engine.

Even if it does that, Microsoft still faces the problem of the strong association in consumers’ minds between Google and Internet search. In theory, it’s far easier for a consumer to switch Internet search engines than it is for them to switch other forms of software. But Mr. Mehdi–a veteran of the Web browser wars of the late 90s in which Microsoft managed to overtake the pioneer in the category, Netscape Communications–says in reality it’s very hard to convince consumers to change their search behavior.

“Consumers are creatures of habit,” he says. “Habits are hard to break.”

It used to be that mobile network operators had a strict control over what applications can be there on your phone. Yes, the phone handset for which you paid and you keep paying every month for service.  This model was painful for developers and consumers alike. And then iPhone came along with its App Store.

As I wrote before this new model provided incentive for developers to innovate and offer their products to the end users more quickly and with less obstacles. In my view this distribution model has really changed the ecosystem of mobile device applications. More and more value has moved to the application layer. The phone (network) companies are trying to figure out how to get back to where they add value. As Nokia CEO said: The ‘wow’ comes from the combination of the device with services.

Here are some choices available today:

• Apple’s App Store
• Nokia’s Ovi store
• Android Application store (recent)
• Microsoft (upcoming)

Among companies announcing new online stores at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were Nokia, Microsoft, French wireless carrier Orange, and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom. They’ll sell everything from simple applications that tell you the weather to more complex navigation software to help you find your way.

The pricing of applications is another tricky question. On iPhone the most popular price is $0.99. How much will you pay for an app? Does Rs. 100 sound right?

Looking at this trend, many universities around the world have started incorporating mobile application development in their course work. I wonder how many universities in Pakistan have adopted this trend and what is the outcome? What role can the Industry here play? How many developers do we have here?

Let’s discuss ideas to promote mobile application development in Pakistan. If you are mobile application developer share your experience here.

You must have heard the news about the new interface of Windows mobile 6.5. Microsoft also announced a few companions – windows marketplace, myphone backup service and partnership with LG. I look at the windows mobile journey versus the iphone and I think its very clear on what has happened here.

I think that if you look at the market today, volumes speak volumes. In the last year we shipped over 20m phones. I’d say, mostly, it’s game on–we are all out there. We are leading the pack on volume. I’d say Apple’s got some advantages on image, but we’re in the early stages.

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer [downplays the company’s iPhone envy]

Just for fun, if you wanted to turn your phone to look like iPhone. There are alot of ways to get your pocket PC and windows mobile phone to look like an IPhone Here’s a free one at lifehacker.com. And there are others which cost money. There’s one for $9.95. Within a few minutes, you can have it downloaded and working.