State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Telecard has been in licensing disputes earlier and is now again as PTA suspends the WiMax commencement certificate of Telecard Limited. This takes Qubee’s future at stake as Qubee (brand name of Augere) for operating WiMax services uses Telecard’s spectrum and licenses. Daily times reports the details.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Monday suspended the commencement certificate of Telecard Limited.

The PTA took interim action in respect of their WLL licences, which were being used in conjunction with the 3.5GHz wireless spectrum by Augere Pakistan for supporting their new wireless broadband service launched in Karachi by the name of Qubee.

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Qualcomm Inc. is trying a new strategy to jump-start the nascent market for mobile pay TV—going direct to the consumer.

The chip maker’s FLO TV subsidiary operates a U.S. network to broadcast TV programming to portable devices. Up to now the service has been available on specially equipped cellphones from AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, adding around $15 to users’ cellphone bills. Late Tuesday, however, Qualcomm announced plans for its own pocket-sized device that is strictly for watching TV on the go.

FLO TV Personal Television, as the product is called, is expected to be offered by retailers this holiday season at a suggested price of $249.99. Qualcomm also will offer its own programming service, with packages expected to cost $5 to $15 a month.

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Wateen Telecom is a sister concern of Warid Telecom and a fully owned venture of Abu Dhabi Group. Wateen, with the collaboration of Motorola, deployed nation-wide WiMAX network in Pakistan and pioneered its deployment globally (actually this was the very first post on this blog in 2006). I remember attending the ITCN in August 2007 when it was launched with a zeal of making Broadband a reality and promising exceptional quality over WiMAX.  Now, after two years, it is rather sad that Wateen has laid off around 550 employees.

What went wrong with Wateen that it had to let go of around 50% of its employees?

Few of my friends had an opportunity to do internship at the RAN Department of Wateen. When they joined on day 1, they were handed a some vendor manuals to study. At the end of the day I called them up to ask how did their day go? They told me that Wateen has more people than work. I said that you can’t decide this in just one day.

Now with this 50% slash in number of employees the picture is clear, they did have more employees than needed. This could be because they hired more manpower during the initial network roll-out. Now what they have on their lists is some upgradation and O&M of the current network. The O&M is outsourced to the vendor and upgrades generally requires less manpower . So the ‘more manpower’ was just not needed.

I leave here for the reader to decide. Did this happen because of the global recession or mismanagement by Wateen’s senior management?

Wi-Tribe has now officially launched its Wi-MAX services in Pakistan. The official launch press release is as follows.

Launches largest wireless broadband Internet service in Pakistan

Doha, June 30, 2009: wi-tribe, a Qtel Group company, today announced the official launch of its wireless broadband service in Pakistan, its largest market to date. The launch phase will include the cities of Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, and Rawalpindi.

“Today, a new milestone is achieved in the evolution of wi-tribe and the realization of our vision to become one of the top 20 telecom players by 2020,” said Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Thani, Chairman of The Qtel Group. “Following our launch in Jordan, Pakistan marks a major stepping stone towards our expansion strategy and our intention to leverage the scale and strengths of The Qtel Group in order to deliver the latest technologies to our customers and continue to enhance services across our operations,” added Sheikh Abdullah.”

Dr. Nasser Marafih, CEO of The Qtel Group and Chairman of wi-tribe, commented: “Consumer broadband is at the heart of the Qtel Group strategy and a major pillar of growth. The launch of wi-tribe in Pakistan is a very important moment for all of us at The Qtel Group as it reflects a major stepping stone towards our commitment to bring broadband wireless access to more people, to connect individuals and businesses more easily and to improve access to the internet in all new and emerging markets.

“Broadband penetration levels in new emerging markets are currently very low compared to markets in the region. However, consumer demand for wireless services is growing at a fast pace. So we will continue to focus on this area in the future as we see good business opportunity and significant growth potential,” added Dr. Nasser.

Shaikh Abdulrahman Ali Al Turki, Chairman and CEO of A.A.Turki Group A.A. Turki Group of companies (ATCO), commended on the growth and success achieved by the wi-tribe group stating, “At ATCO we are extremely pleased with wi-tribe’s developments since its establishment in 2007. The addition of Pakistan to our tribe is proof of our firm commitment to bridge the digital divide and bring to emerging markets the best in connectivity and ease of access. It is about time these markets got excellent quality service.”

“wi-tribe uses WiMAX technology to provide customers with the advantage of broadband internet access wirelessly, giving them the option of accessing the internet whenever and wherever they choose within the network area,” commented Sami Hinedi, CEO, wi-tribe Group. “We strongly believe in improving the lifestyle of our customers by understanding their needs and offering them the best personalized customer experience. We want to provide solutions that are simple, easy and valued by individuals, businesses and the Government,” he added.

wi-tribe is a focused and dedicated consumer wireless broadband provider and will offer instant connectivity with applications tailor-made and simplified to accommodate the needs of every customer. The wi-tribe service will deliver broadband internet access through the ‘plug in and play’ option offering speeds of 256Kbps, 512 Mbps, and 1 Mbps. The process of becoming a wi-triber is extremely simple and beneficial. The wi-tribe service uses an efficient and highly effective plug and play modem which provides online access on the go. Internet users in Pakistan will experience the best in consumer wireless broadband service and wi-tribe’s unique customer care experience.

The official website has details for packages that wi-tribe is offering in Pakistan.

With this launch the WiMAX competition will definitely boom in Pakistan.

Those who have used the wi-tribe services, do share your experience with us.

[Press release via Zawya.com]

There is much to hear these days that the latest developments in the LTE technology will leave behind WiMAX. In a broader perspective, the situation is different. The article below from Orange Business Live discusses it.

Although the WiMAX vendor community has been pushing the notion that 2009 is the year of WiMAX, the recession coupled with an aggressive push towards mobile broadband’s LTE (long term evolution) could put the technology’s wider uptake in jeopardy. Nortel, for instance, has left the WiMAX market and Alcatel-Lucent has diverted R&D spend from WiMAX to LTE, although it seems committed to pushing WiMAX and cites this shift as being down to WiMAX now now being productised.

“LTE is our future,” said GSMA chief executive Rob Conway at the recent Mobile World Congress. “You can talk about WiMAX if you want, but it is a sideshow to this main event.”

Scorching words, but with analyst firm ABI Research predicting WiMAX subscriber revenue growth of more than 4,500% this year, the technology is far from over and done with. As ABI principal analyst, Philip Solis, points out; “To ignore a growth market in a down economy would be a mistake.”

Other analysts agree and point out that mobile WiMAX already has commercial deployments while LTE lags behind. Daryl Schoolar, at In-Stat, thinks WiMAX and LTE will take different paths. “Most of the operators looking to deploy WiMAX come to it from the fixed network space,” he says. “Most of the early operators supporting LTE come from the mobile space. These operators want to use LTE to increase capacity and peak rates on their existing mobile networks.”

Instead of LTE being a threat to WiMAX, Schoolar thinks HSPA may well turn out to be WiMAX’s true competitor. From an enterprise point-of-view the battle being teed-up in the vendor industry is divisive and, in many respects, counter-productive. End-users don’t care about the method, only the ease-of-use it offers and the bandwidth it provides. From that perspective, WiMAX is here now and can be used whereas LTE remains a concept for the future with most operators unlikely to be deploy it until 2011 or 2012.

[Via Orange Business Live]

Twelve recent, noticeable telecom and technology trends from Pakistan.

• Popular: iPhone 3G, Book your number by Zong, Mobile Internet with USB modems
• Success Stories: Zong brand launch, Telenor strategy
• Survivors: Ptcl, Warid
• On the defensive: Mobilink
• Wrong Turns: Tax increase on telecom, charging for customer service call
• Defying the odds: Entreprenurship continues to thrive and inspire
• Becoming mainstream: Social networking
• Getting noticed: bloggers and Internet users by Google
• Shift in business model: User generated content threatens traditional media
• Challenges: economy, energy & power shortage, political instability 
• On track: WiMAX with second commercial rollout
• Policy issues: Enforcement of new SIM registration policy, when to rollout 3G

Editor’s Note: Please join me to welcome Arsalan Mir. Arsalan is an undergraduate student in final year Telecommunication Engineering at FAST-NUCES (Karachi). He is the Vice-Chairperson of IEEE student branch at NUCES. Arsalan can be reached at arsalan.tmir@yahoo.com.

WiMAX in Pakistan emerged commercially with the launch of Wateen in August 2007. Recently, Mobilink has come up with its WiMAX brand ‘Infinity” and now it looks like the competition will soon elevate with Wi-tribe and TeleCard entering the WiMAX service race in Pakistan.

Wi-tribe is a joint venture of Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and A.A. Turki Corporation for Trading and Contracting (ATCO) in partnership with Clearwire. Wi-tribe is already offering services in Jordan and in Pakistan it has emerged out of the acquisition of majority stake in Burraq Telecom that occurred more than a year ago. They plan to showcase the real world benefits of Wireless Broadband to Internet community in Pakistan.

We will be offering high-speed Internet that is simple, affordable, and a portable alternative to fixed broadband. The Motorola WiMAX solution frees customers from the fixed line services.
Mohammad Sadiq
CEO, wi-tribe Pakistan.

Motorola has signed a multi-year WiMAX contract with wi-tribe Pakistan limited. Motorola has commenced deploying wi-tribe’s WiMAX network in the 3.5GHz spectrum. Commercial launch is expected during 2009.

TeleCard, a fixed wireless operator renowned for its Go-CDMA service, will also roll-out WiMAX under their current brand Supernet which is already offering internet services.

Newest development at the TeleCard will further enhance the Company’s profitability and will be a significant contributor to stakeholder satisfaction on an ongoing basis.
Aamir Niazi

Vice Chairman, TeleCard

Augere,an European company focused on broadband delivery in emerging markets, has been selected by TeleCard as the principal contractor to design and build the network such as to position a great offering / value proposition for the growing and very quality sensitive internet user community in the country. The equipment deployment has commenced in initial phase and the company expects the offering of service commercially by next year.

References:

[i] http://witribe.pk

[ii] http://daily.pk

[iii] http://www.telegeography.com