NADRA and Misplaced Excitements

NADRA has been doing a good job. I realized this when I got CNIC (Computerized National Identity Cards) made for my entire family in a decent environment in almost a matter of few hours and got them issued after the promised time without any issue – except for the snapshot that always come up funny.

To a large extent, it is widely reported, NADRA has done its initial bit of assignment – digitizing large portions of the national demographic records (so far, 82 million citizens had been registered). The massive amount of hardware, software and humanware that NADRA has accumulated for quickly achieving the required results are now posing a justification challenge. The 11,000 staff, 400 National and 5 International Offices need to have a reason to continue getting a paycheck at the month end!
And this is how they are planning a justification case (source: Dawn of Sept 27, 2006):

“Although the main business of Nadra is related to issuance of NICs and machine readable passports, the strengths of its professionals can be used for commercial projects,” he [PM Shaukat Aziz] said while urging Nadra to make partnerships with other companies and groups for export of technology-based products.

It is already been tipped off that NADRA would soon be providing ‘financial transaction services’ to banks in Pakistan.

NADRA Technologies, as the project is being passionately called has a number of potential ‘fault lines’:

• Mixing data that belongs to Government and the one that belongs to businesses is a wrong idea in the first place. Yes, I know physical mix-ups will be prevented by such and such space-aged technology but still, its the people who ultimately control, manage (and mismanage!) machines.
• Government projects and facilities are designed to be not-to-profit for good reasons. Unless NADRA is Google (which we all know it is NOT), challenging this conventional wisdom can only be considered misplaced excitement.

So next time you see your CNIC details posted at a hacker group’s website, you know you’ve been forewarned!

Keep Talking

A number of readers of this blog have contributed useful and insightful comments on a variety of topics. The two-way modern Internet (aka Web 2.0) is a breakaway from the TV-like model of the old web. User interaction is key to the overall value enhancement of any Internet resource.

Thank you to all those who have commented on the posts of this blog. Go ahead and keep talking!

Slackworld Resumes with Fifth Issue

After a lapse of almost a year, Ayaz Ahmed Khan is back with the fifth issue of Slackworld. Ayaz, who reportedly lives and breathes in Karachi, co-edits this Slackware focused on-line magazine with Mikhail Zotov. Slackware is one of the earliest distribution of Linux and still enjoys a large, active following.

Although user contributions from Pakistan to on-line Linux publications have historically been there, an editorial level contribution to such a project is rare and hence very welcome.

Slackworld is available under an OPL styled license.

DIDX Gets Internet Telephony Excellence Award for 2006

DIDX – DID Exchange from Super Technologies- with Rehan Ahmed Allahwala from Karachi (yes he travels a lot but is based in Karachi) as one of its main drivers bags one of the forty three companies that received the Internet Telephony Excellence Award for 2006. The award is organized by TMC, a galaxy of communication related print and on-line publications.

Other companies that bagged the award included Alcatel, Inter-Tel, Inc., Juniper Networks, Netcentrex, Overture Networks, Samsung, Toshiba and Verizon.

Super Technologies have managed to remain ahead of the technological curve specially when compared to local companies. As early as in 1995, the company that was later to become Super Technologies was offering Faxaway services (international fax over email) to the local market. At that time, international calls cost you an arm and a leg and email was still a novelty. From Faxaway to DIDX, the company rolled as many services as the number of alphabets in English. Some of which that I can remember off the hand include Internet telephone line where the users used to get a US number for their soft or hard IP phones, call center solutions, IP PBX etc.

DIDX works on the novel concepts of useless-for-me-but-gem-for-others concept of sharing and exchanging DID (Direct Inward Dialing) numbers between Telecos of the world. Each Telco that operates anywhere in the world has access or ownership of the local E.164 telephone numbers. Using DIDX services, and the magic of VoIP protocols, Telcos can offer their cheap DID resources to others and gain DID resources on other networks for their customers use.

DIDX assumes cheap, resilient Internet available everywhere where its services are used – a situation that cannot be taken for granted in contemporary regulatory environment of Pakistan. However, despite the fact, DIDX is picking up in Pakistan. A number of Telcos are opting for DIDX services and offering a myriad of telephone numbers atop their local loop services in Pakistan.

Manager Network Operations, Karachi

Worldcall has opening for a lead of Network Operations, based in Karachi:

Experienced team leader for managing Network Operations. Motivation, maturity and ability to work independently is absolutely required. Solid hands-on experience in Operating Systems and Internet Servers, Layer 2 and Layer 3 devices needed.. Exposure to CMTS is a big plus. Must be able to lead a team of engineers and evolve the department. Graduate engineers preferred. This position is based in

Apply via email to zambeel[at]gmail.com

This blog occasionally publishes job announcements relevant to the Pakistani Telecom sector when the same could be verified via a personal web of trust. Contact me at tariq.mustafa[at]gmail.com if you need to put your piece here.

Meetup at PTA on Bandwidth Charges Tomorrow

PTA is holding a meeting with stakeholders on the topic of Bandwidth Charges Reduction tomorrow evening at its Head Quarters in Islamabad.

Input from the industry on this issue is now available from the PTA site (here).

Creditcheck is Hiring

Creditcheck has a job announcement to make:

Creditcheck is looking for an experienced IT manager to look after the IT infrastructure comprising of a mix of Microsoft Windows, Unix and Internetworking facilities. If you have been in the industry for 5 years or more and are as good in people skills as in packets and paging stuff, you can propose yourself. Monthly remunerations can touch six figures in Pak Rupees for candidates who can prove themselves.

Apply via email to zambeel[at]gmail.com

This blog occasionally publishes job announcements relevant to the Pakistani Telecom sector when the same could be verified via a personal web of trust. Contact me at tariq.mustafa[at]gmail.com if you need to put your piece here.

Additional Free Info from yours truly: Creditcheck (no homepage for now) is a new financial sector start-up in Pakistan. The organization will work closely with the government, banks and other financial institutes to provide credit checking facilities to the businesses to help them better understand their credit operations risks. This is essentially a e-shop and as such they are out to build a good IT team to deliver the results.

PTA’s Cell Crime Combat Effort Expected To Fail

PTA is telling us that their new initiative to curb cell phone crime will be active from 30th September 2006.

Chairman PTA said that the mobile operators have already been directed to install Equipment Identity Register (EIR) system which enables a stolen or snatched cell phone to be blocked through its International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) which is a unique number of every cell phone in the world. The Chairman said that once this system starts functioning, the magnitude of this menace will be decreased significantly.

Given the extent of the problem, the media is also building high expectation of this announcement which needs some scrutiny. The effort relies on two concepts:

• That everyone will press *#06# and will record the unique IMEI number of his/her cell number and that he/she shall be able to retain it in a safe place and report it to the police when/if the phone gets stolen
• That everyone owning a cellular phone is comfortable in registering his/her cell phone loss with the local police
• That the IMEI is something that cannot be changed on the phone

International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI for short is supposed to be unique on each of the GSM phone in the world. However, as it turns out, IMEI can be forged. Given the expertise of the local cell phone market wizards, the EIR set up is going to be of little use.

An old entry of Setp 2004 of ITU Daily, an article titled ‘Crime Prevention for Mobile Networks’ makes interesting reading. While noting that SIM cards are hard to replicate (i.e. reproduced illegally) because of the advanced encryption algorithms employed in the formation of SIM, IMEIs can be re-programmed and forged easily.

When an attempt is made to connect a stolen phone to any network, the IMEI can be interrogated and, if the operator is connected to the CEIR, it will register as stolen and the handset barred from making or receiving any calls. However, a major weakness of this approach has been the fact that some IMEIs are are neither unique nor as secure as they could be.

BBC’s news archive of 2002 record comments from all top cellular companies (BT, Vodafone, Organe, Virgin Mobile etc) confirming that we should not bind high expectations from the EIR (or the CEIR as it is called elsewhere) set up. The BT-Cell rep says “New IMEIs can be programmed into stolen handsets and 10% of IMEIs are not unique.”

Because of the way the IMEI is stored on cell phones (permanent vs writable memory space), phones may or may not be reprogrammed to change their original IMEI. Bad news: Most of the models from Nokia (most popular brand in Pakistan) can be re-programmed.

Nokia phones that can be unlocked: 1100, 1101, 1110, 1600, 2100, 2300, 2600, 2650, 2652, 3100, 3120, 3200, 3220, 3210, 3230, 3300, 3310, 3330, 3410, 3510, 3510i, 3650, 3660, 5100, 5110, 5130, 5140, 5146, 5210, 5510, 6020, 6021, 6030, 6100, 6101, 6110, 6111, 6130, 6150, 6170, 6210, 6220, 6230, 6230i, 6250, 6260, 6310, 6310i, 6510, 6600, 6610, 6610i, 6650, 6670, 6800, 6810, 6820, 6822, 7110,  7200, 7210, 7250, 7250i, 7260, 7270, 7280 7600, 7610, 7650, 7700, 7710, 8210, 8310, 8800, 8810, 8850, 8890, 8910, 8910i, 9110, 9110i, 9210, 9210i, 9300, 9300i, 9500, and N-Gage, N-Gage QD

Someone please show PTA the worldwide marketplace of GSM Phones Programming and Reverse Engineering.

Daily Times on Wateen

Pakistan’s Daily Times agains come up with a FUD aimed right at Wateen. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts on this topic, news-analysis is one thing, direct personal on-slaught is another. From the article published today, September 19, 2006 (read full text here – registration required to read Daily Times [smarties can use bugmenot {firefox ext here} to bypass such absurd restrictions on news portals])

From the article:

Experts say that the management of Wateen is ominously reminiscent of the collapsed BCCI. “Huge salaries, perks and freewheeling executives are the common link,” claimed an insecure insider. Chief Executive Officer Tariq Malik claims to be a UK qualified Chartered Accountant but an examination of the list of members of the institute does not carry his name. The industry has been told that he is “a director on the main board of British Telecom” but this is not true because he was only an analyst on a Malaysian Telecom transaction by BT. Further enquiries reveal that he left the UK in a hurry without much explanation, giving rise to rumours that he might have been involved in some improper financial dealings. His last employer in Pakistan has alleged that when he left “he stole highly valued technical information including a request for a proposal issued by Warid Telecom in which the entire inside of the proposal inadvertently still carried our name!”

This is getting too direct even for news commentary I would say.

Payphone Annual License Fee Reduced

PTA will now charge only 0.1 percent Annual license Fee from Card Pay Phone Operators on their gross revenue with effect from 1st July 2006 instead of 1.5 percent. (Read the rest of the announcement here)

Payphone market in Pakistan is still thriving despite the high number of GSM phone penetration in the masses. The semi-urban and the rural areas of Pakistan are the juicy spots for the Payphone operators. The wireless local loop operators (chiefly Telecard and V-PTCL) are active in the payphone segment and are benefitting from their wireless technologies reaching the under-served semi-urban markets.

However, with the current price-war driving the cost of telecommunication down fast, the PCO (Public Call Office – as it is popularly known in this part of the world) will come to a flat and will eventually decline.

Pope Needs Internet

Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial remarks on general Islam have disturbed Muslims around the world. That Jihad and similar topics are already being hotly debated within the Muslim world, similar thoughts coming from the symbolic representative of the Chiristian community would have been not an issue at all. What irked the billion odd souls of the planet is the generalization that the Pope chose. Anyone sincere in bringing peace and harmony among the major faiths of the world needs to check twice and thrice what is coming out of his/her mouth. As a technology oriented blog, our advice to Pope is to spend some more time studying Islam, its teachings and spirit. Internet resources could come in handy and we hope Italy has good Internet pipes coming home.

PTA Keeps on Lipservicing Broadband Cause

PTA has yet again paid lipservice to the cause of wide broadband penetration in Pakistan. At a seminar organized on the theme of Wimax by South Asia Middle East North Africa (SAMENA) Telecommunications Council, PTA’s chief repeated the combo of words that could easily be created by anyone associated with the industry.

More clear, practical announcements on the broadband penetration cause would have been far more useful. Yes, PTA has published a consultation paper that aims to bring down the costs of Internet bandwidth in Pakistan but bandwidth tariffs are just one part of the broadband proliferation. Matters relating to IP traffic exchange between service providers, local loop unbundling, application agnostic Internet infrastructure, development of localized contents, IPv6 adoption via incentives and legislation, subsidies on local telehouses in the private sector and many other factors are needed to kick-off a broadband revolution in Pakistan in its true sense.

Telenor Pakistan Preparing for ‘Air Stunt’

Telenor Pakistan is reportedly for an ‘air stunt’ – making its services available onboard airplanes in the skies of Pakistan. Telenor is one of the owners of Aeromobile, a firm leading the research and deployment of GSM technology in aeroplanes. According to The Peninsula On-line of Qatar:

Telenor Pakistan is facilitating high level discussions to enable management at Aeromobile, owner of the GSM on Air technology, to establish the system in Pakistan, said Norwegian company’s Executive Vice President, Irfan Wahab Khan.

Readers might be reminded that Voice and (wifi) Internet access in the air abroad aeroplanes has not been deployed widely not because of difficulties in implementing the technology but because of regulatory and governance issues relating to the use of spectrum in the air when the planes cross geographic borders. If the reported deals gets through, according to the paper, “Pakistan may soon become one of the few Asian nations where cellular connectivity would even be available at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet onboard a passenger jet.”

The report also indicates that players – after engaging themselves in a bloody price war – in the exploding cellular market of Pakistan are desperately looking for differentiating features in their services.

Warid Expands with Ericsson

Warid has announced that it is expanding its GSM network with the help of gear from Ericsson.

Ericsson has signed a US$274 million contract with Pakistan’s Warid Telecom that will see Ericsson undertake a major evolution and expansion of Warid’s GSM network, including its Mobile Softswitch solution, radio, transmission and packet core network equipment, as well as multimedia services.

Under the agreement, Ericsson will provide capacity for an additional 10 million subscribers through its mobile softswitch solution and the expansion of the radio access network in existing and new cities.

Warid and Wateen are two of the several company that the Abu Dhabi Group has opened up in the fast emerging telecom market of Pakistan. Wateen is the Transmission and Data Communication wing of the group while Warid was focused on cellular (GSM) operations. However, hallway-talks are pointing towards a brand merger of Warid and Wateen as the group is realizing the importance of branding as well as the fact that in the era of fast convergence, a single entity might serve the purpose best.

Wateen has already signed a contract with Motorola for the biggest wireless data network in Pakistan. Mobilink, the largest GSM operator in Pakistan with the SMP status, is also rumoured to be preparing for leap-frogging 3G and betting on Wimax deployment. The Wimax trials preparations are reported to have the roots in the Intel Capital‘s funding to Orascom Telecom, the parent company of Mobilink.

PTA Wakesup to its PRS Regulation Duty

PTA has reportedly asked Telefun (a telephonic entertainment) company to stop deceiving the uses and stop the fake Bachan show it runs on its popular number 0900 78601.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is supposed to be a watchdog body – regulating the telecom playing field in a way that favors end customers and contributes towards the consecutive socio-economic development.

PRS – Premium Rate Service has been an mature service UK and North America. The service allows an enterprise to acquire a special number – typically beginning with 900 or 0900 and set a rate of its own. People who call on this number are billed by their respective operator that tariff. The enterprise owning this PRS number gets paid for when calls are made to this number by its telecom provider. The telecom provider typically keeps an agreed percentage for this service and the burden of bills collection from the end users and interconnecting telcos.

The service is used for a variety of purposes – entertainment being just one of them. There are many uses of PRS in other countries that are yet to be explored in Pakistan such as consultancy services, information provisioning and charity contribution.

Pakistan has mostly seen the use of PRS in the entertainment area. Initially, the PRS rates were as high as Rs 48 per minute. Stories of unsuspecting citizen falling trap to the PRS services (where advertisements seldom makes the rate very clear to the unsuspecting viewers). Later, PTA clamped an upper limit to the maximum per minute charges that could be applied on PRS as Rs 14 per minute.

However, instead of restricting the upper limit of the PRS charges, PTA needs to ensure, by close monitoring, that such services are not put to deceptive usage.

The national FM radio networks have been virtually taken over by Telefun where they sponsor entire shows/days and the RJs are made to repeat the advertisement punch line of Telefun every time they play a song. This is never accompanied by the mandatory warning that should be given out with such messages about the high charges associated with these numbers. PTA clearly is not playing the best watchdog it is supposed to be.

A number of wannabes have joined Telefun in a clear attempt to make use of PTA’s indifference towards this issue. Telemasti and Phonemag are two names that have cropped up lately to claim their share of the loot from the unsuspecting customer base left completely unguarded by the regulator.

(Briefly?,) Mobilink Strips International Long Distance Charges

Mobilink – the SMP cellular operator in Pakistan – is announcing free International Long Distance calls for Jazz – its prepaid brand. The announcement says that only air time would be charged – something around Rs 2.50 per min (4 cents per min) and that no specific destinations were mentioned as exclusions to this rate.

Comments from real users on whether the new ‘offer’ actually works or not are not yet available.

Apparently, if this proves to be a short term offer, it can easily be equalled to a desperate effort of making customers live with the irksome service in charm of free International calling.

If this is marketing, it is smart. If this is competition, this is bloody.

India Allows 3G Experimentations

Reuters is reporting that India has allowed cellular operators to experiment with 3G services:

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India has allowed major carriers, including Bharti Airtel Ltd., to conduct indoor trials of mobile services based on the 3G spectrum so they can test equipment, the telecoms ministry said on Wednesday.

Booming growth in the world’s fastest-growing wireless services market has led to a paucity of spectrum in large cities. Carriers have requested the government to allot fresh frequencies in the 3G and other bands to ease congestion.

Carriers that were given 3G spectrum for tests include state-run telecoms firms Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., and private firms Bharti Airtel, 30.8 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., and Hutchison Essar Ltd., an industry source told Reuters.

India plans to allot spectrum in the 3G band later this year, and has appointed a panel to look into pricing and allocation.

Grown-up fights teething problems

‘Pakistan’s Favorite Cellular Service’ is once again reportedly having problems in its service for the past few days in Karachi (at least). Reaching a subscriber on the service from a landline is not possible. On-net calls (within same network) calls are as unpredictable as the weather of Karachi. Here is what is interesting about these ‘growing pains’ as the company would most probably call such problems:

• The service has already reached a subscription level that has earned it the label of SMP – Significant Market Power
• The service generates an awesome amount of revenue that is purely based on its internal network
• The network has grown up significantly enough to bear a fault-tolerant and re-routable traffic handling features
• The network (in terms of its size) is probably the closest approximation of an ideal network that a cellular operator could wish

Despite the cool milestones mentioned above (cool from the view point of any cellular operator operating in a dynamic growing market like Pakistan), it is really strange to find a reason for blanket outages that are currently being faced by the service users. Is it the core part? Is it the access part? May be the appetite for more users and under-dimensioning?

What disappoints an average user is the thought that if the most powerful, most resourceful and revenue-rich service like this could only offer an irksome service, what could be expected of the smaller guys. And oh yes, the magic-sim issue never got a clarification!

Pakcon 2006 – Call For Papers

Pakistan’s Underground Hacking Convention – Pakcon 2006 – has issued Call For Papers with last date for CfP being 15
October, 2006.

What is Pakcon ? As per the announcement:

PAKCON III will be a 1-day event. There will be a single track with “normal” talks as well as “lightening” talks presented by renowned, skilled and knowledgeable computer and information security professionals from the world over.

The event will take place in December 2006 in Karachi.

Jobs Vacancies – Transmission Systems (Cellular)

Announcements related to some vacancies at a cellular operator follows:

Assistant Manager (1 position)
General: Graduate Engineer (Electronics/Electrical/Computer Systems/Telecomm) from a leading engineering & technology university with minimum 4 years of total professional experience after graduation with 2 years of direct experience in Telecomm Transmission area. Initially, the incumbent would be based in Islamabad and would be required to permanently re-locate to Karachi after completion of a transition period. The incumbent will eventually become an integral part of the Data Core Networks Department of the company managing a number of brandnames being served from a single packet core network.
Special Skills: Must be proficient in mangaging team(s) of engineers, should be able to interact with PTCL, PTA, Contractors and other similar entities. Must possess excellent communication skills. The job will required frequent in-country project-based traveling, time-barred and deadline-driven projects affecting live voice networks.
Technical: Deep understanding of Telecomm Transmission systems such as Add-Drop Multiplexers and Bandwidth Managers (New Bridge, Tellabs, Nortel etc). Know-how of MSS (Multi-service Switches) is a strong plus point, knowledge of PTCL’s long distance transmission network, transmission sub systems such as protocol and interface convertors, standalone data communication devices etc.

Senior Network Engineers (2 positions)
Graduate Engineer (Telecom/Electronics/Electrical/Computer Systems) from a leading engineering & technology university. 2 to 3 years of experience in a large ISP or Telecommunication Operator. Should have direct experience or very good understanding of Telecommunication Systems. Must have exposure to TDM concepts of Data Communications and OSI Layer 2 protocols. This is a very responsible position that demands a sharp learning curve, good troubleshooting skills and a desire to meet deadlines and survive challenges. The incumbents are guaranteed integration with an excellent, high calibre cross functional Data Core Networks team based in Karachi where these positions would be permanently relocated to.

Network Engineers (1 position)
Graduate Engineer (Telecom/Electronics/Electrical/Computer Systems) from a leading engineering & technology university. Minimum 1 year experience in related field (Telecommunications, Data Communications, Wide Area Networks. Must have strong engineering concepts and desire to enter the exciting convereged communication field. The incumbents are guaranteed integration with an excellent, high calibre cross functional Data Core Networks team based in Karachi where these positions would be permanently relocated to.

Apply via email to zambeel[at]gmail.com

This blog occasionally publishes job announcements relavent to the Pakistani Telecom sector when the same could be verified via a personal web of trust. Contact me at tariq.mustafa[at]gmail.com if you need to put your piece here.