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Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has released a ‘consultation paper‘ on its website for public comments. Those who might be short on time to formally comment on the paper can use the comment space here and I will try to incorporate the inputs in my response.
PTCL’s latest offers page details some new local call charges plan. Calls in the evening - apparently targeted towards female dominated domestic population - will now cost twice but will last a full hour. This is a tit-for-tat reaction to the Mobilink and Telenor’s Rs 5 an hour and Rs 4 an hour on-net plans.
The UIN charges, as mentioned in point 4 of the announcement, are to remain unchanged at Rs 2 for unlimited time. Unless there is still something cooking, at least for now, the users can relax that the multi-metered Internet calls are not here (yet!).
p.s: The classroom and the student shown in the graphics at the PTCL site bear no resemblance to either Pakistan or UAE. What happened to the principle of local relevance!
This report from Daily Times provides a good activity roundup relating to new Telecommunication initiatives in Azad Jammu Kashmir and Northern Areas. From the report:
In the wake of October 8 earthquake, the PTA granted temporary permission to mobile phone companies operating in Pakistan for provision of services in quake-hit areas. Later on, they were invited to obtain permanent licenses for AJK and NAs against the ILF of $10 million each.
Subsequently four mobile companies Mobilink, Ufone, Warid and Telenor acquired licenses by paying 50 percent of the license fee ($5 million) each upfront as per the terms of the payment. The $20 million (Rs 1.2 billion) collected by PTA from four operators has been deposited with the AJK Council Secretariat and Chief Secretary, NAs in the ratio of 77:23 based on the population of the two areas. Their share was Rs 927.696 million and Rs 277.104 million respectively. In view of special circumstances, PTA has not deducted any fee from the amount.
The fifth mobile license for AJ&K and NAs has recently been issued to CMPak (Paktel) for which the fees would be deposited under the same arrangements. All five mobile companies will pay remaining 50 percent (i.e. $5 million each) in 10 equal annual installments.
It may be mentioned that, with the introduction of mobile phone services people of these areas are getting enhanced communication facilities. So far, cellular operators in AJK and NAs have provided one million mobile connections. Mobile service is available in the following areas of AJK including Bagh, Bhimber, Bharhing, Kotli, Muzzafferabad, Palandri, Rawalakot, Mirpur, Dhirkot, Ghari Duppatta, Hattian Bala, Dhudyal, Barnala, Kakra, Islam Gargh, Dirkot, Chamankot, Baloch, Sehnsa, KhuiRatta, Hajira, Tarar Khel, Abbas Pur, Jaraee, Rajdhani. Thraowchi, Puna, Sumani, Charoi, Fatepur, Barnala, Paniola, etc. In Northern Areas Gilgit, Hunza, Chilas, Skardu, Shigar, Danyor have been provided mobile services.
Moreover, Special Communication Organisation (SCO) which was the major provider of telecom services in the region till very recent is working on its several developmental activities including Rural Telecom Uplift Project Phase-II for provision of 80,000 telephone lines (along with 266 km Optic Fibre), enhancement of GSM capacity by 65,000 lines, laying of 570 km optic fibre, 26 digital exchanges with VSAT connectivity and laying of outside plant (OSP) in NAs.
SCO is also planning to lay optical fibre cable link for international connectivity between China and Pakistan.
SCO has also taken initiatives to provide Internet services to these areas in the form of Dialup, DSL and CDMA 1X services by entering into O&M agreements with existing providers in Pakistan.
The image below is from an extremely low income area - infact, a slum in Karachi. A small cabin-shop that deals in mobile phones, PCO and allied services is serving the population of the katchi abadi.
Owning a cell phone is pretty common even in the very-low income groups in (at least) the bigger cities of Pakistan - thanks to the celluar services boom we are finding ourselves in these days.
As could be seen from the poster visible in the image below, someone who cannot even spell Telenor correctly has pasted these posters across most of similar shops in the slum announcing the MNP facility. When I inquired about this from the shopkeeper whether this is a service exclusive to his outfit he replied in negative saying instead that this is being ‘done by the company’. As we can well decipher, it does not seem like a Telenor’s official announcement but it is almost certain that Telenor has at least some amount of resources dedicated for hooking up even the baseline low ARPU customers into its folds via the MNP route most probably via some sort of market agents.
The long on-going, almost over-due project was declared signed and closed with Alcatel-Lucent. Daily time has the full story here. This is going to be the second major countrywide Wimax project, the earlier one being deployed by Wateen and uses Motorola’s gear. The project, whose financial size or commercial availability dates has not yet been publicly disclosed, reportedly makes extensive use of the strong channel sales partners that Mobilink has developed in the rewarding cellular market of Pakistan over the past many years.
The next similarly sized announcement should come from PTCL which is still talking to a number of solution vendors in this domain. Apart from these three large scale projects, a number of other entities, some of which are in the security infrastructure of the country, are deploying Wimax technology for their respective requirements.
There are till a number of players like Telecard and Cybernet who won the 3.5 Ghz frequency in the open auctions during deregulation but are not moving ahead with their Wimax adventures for want of some business case precedence and internal priorities.
Blogging, telecommunication and entrepreneurship are all picking up in contemporary Pakistan. In this context, let me share a quick review I did of a recently launched value added service of Telenor. Telenor has branded the service as PicShare. The service’s back-end is based on a relatively new mobile value added service company called PixSense that has some Pakistani origin.
I have the opinion that Telenor appears to be the most data savvy among the cellular companies operating in Pakistan. Picture sharing and blogging are getting popular and it made a lot of sense for Telenor to have this service and nothing better than selecting a Pakistani back-end company to deliver the results.
Here is the review of the service itself (using Telenor EGE service on a Nokia 6300):
I signed up for the service (cost = Rs 30/mo + Data Charges for image uploads) from the main Telenor website. The menus, that were not very neatly done in terms of graphics, asked for my cell phone make and model and then showed me some bleak (blue) screenshots of the phone’s menus and explained where to go and what to select.
While I was at it, I received a confirmation email from support.pixsense@telenor.com.pk that CONTAINED my password. Normally, this is not the industry practice as plain email is not safe from being snooped on the network.
The application was easy to install via the ‘get application’ button on the Telenor’s website. However, since the application requires a number of access permissions (communication for data transfer and user data for accessing photos and videos stored on the phone), a number of permissions were required to be set. The application itself was not smart to tell which of the permissions are missing so it was cumbersome to visit the complex tree of the application access menu and make sure that these permissions are in place. It took me five to six tries before I was there and every time the application just gave a simple error message ‘check permissions’. I guess putting the intelligence of ‘what permission is actually missing’ can enhance the usability of the application.
Once I fired up the application, the application asked for my telephone number and PicShare password. I guess the telephone number should have been automatically picked up by the application at least. I hoped that I do not have to go through this process every time I use the application and I was right. The next time I started the application and it was intelligent enough to remember my login details.
Once inside the application, it showed the sole snap that I had taken up today. The snap got uploaded automatically probably because I selected the option which allowed this. The background nature of upload did not allow to gauge the speed of the transfer. I guess that was fast. I was hoping that as a courtesy and display pro-privacy thinking, the application to tell me that so many applications have been uploaded to the web from my phone.
I hurried to my notebook to check out the results on the web and this is the Achilles heel of the Telenor PicShare in my opinion. Since the application is from PixSense, Telenor has sort of out-sourced this (or probably that was the only way of doing it) to PixSense. While connected to the Telenor’s website to access my recently uploaded photos, it resorted to frames with the inside frame being called off the Pixsense web servers (http://picshare.pixsense.com). Web developers have long abandoned use of frames inside the web pages for good reasons. Even on a wide-screen desktop of my notebook, I was getting horizontal scroll bars and the two vertical scroll bars (one for the main page itself, the other for the embedded frame) was cumbersome and for a while took me back to 1995 when frames were still being used.
The PicSense online interface for viewing and managing does not allow direct URLs so that the uploaded images cannot be used directly - a great disadvantage to those who blog. Since the service is ‘all about sharing’, it makes sense that this requirement should have been considered. The system does allow a ‘download’ button to download the jpeg image to your computer. I tried sharing one of the snaps and the presence of frames completely confused me about what was happening while the ’sharing’ page opened up. Once the page reappeared, it gave the option to share the stuff via email or via SMS. I shared the collection by providing it another of my email addresses. An email was received moments late that contained the shared image’s thumbnail and a URL which opened after some delay but once again, with a number of frames.
My overall experience with the service and the application can be rated at 3/5 with lots of room remaining for improvement in the application logic, user notification, privacy and the main web interface on the web.
Other interested users at TGP have noted existing competition such as Twango for this service. If you have any additional review inputs, feel free to share in the comments.
News are trickling in about the expected expansion of CMPak’s network. This report talks about ZTE providing a 14,000 carrier radio network and a 10 million subscriber core to CMPak expected roll-out.
Given the boom (pdf) of telecom services in Pakistan, these announcements sound like run of the mill these days. However, an interesting trend to note here is the fact that the core telecommunication equipment is getting increasingly all-IP.
Telecommunication (read voice) networks have traditionally relied upon TDM circuits to work. However, with the success of the IP Technologies in the world of Internet (and the Internet itself), there is a worldwide drift from TDM to IP for everything done at these telecommunication services shops.
According to the agreement, ZTE will provide its next-generation V3 base stations, and the core network will adopt all-IP networking.
What does this mean on ground? The telecommunication power houses will increasing turn to IP networks within their core to serve their various needs - from back hauling voice from their radio networks to their core, to IMS, signaling, billing, customer care and messaging. There will be an increased incentive to build out large, high performance and high availability IP networks in the core to serve this long menu of internal services needed by the exploding telecommunication services.
Other telecom operators who have recently upgraded their networks (or are in the process) have also been putting IP capabilities in the access network to cope with the expected increased demands from cities due to a swelling subscriber population. Mobilink had installed IP (over DSL) pico cells in some part of Karachi to extend its access network in dense urban building areas. I do not have detailed information on this and it would be great if some reader could fill this up for the rest of us.
Worldcall has banners up in various parts of the city announcing the availability of their wireless local loop service which was anticipated since May 2007. The advertisements say free local call, free nationwide calls (presumably on their own network), 85 paisa per minute to US/UK and 10 paisa/min for WLL based Internet. The service is running off Huawei’s equipment.
CDMA based WLL services have already seen earlier players like Telecard and PTCL and have drawn a mixed response in terms of service standard quality. The ‘free on-net’ calling phenomenon which was triggered by Telecard (and is now being followed by Worldcall too) has found some loyal subscribers. I regularly spot shop owners in various localities of the city keeping a ‘Go CDMA’ phone as part of their communication arsenal and most of the time, the end user is doing the ‘least cost routing’ - finding the service that provides the cheapest service to reach the particular end number.
However, with a very high/healthy tele-density that is regularly being cited in anything good is to be said about Pakistan and a stiff competition and friction between DSL providers, it looks like that Worldcall as a late entrant in this digital communication race in Karachi would be having a tough time at best.
Performance of the reported availability of EvDO services on this network would be worth observing. If you have a review of the service, please post it in the comments.
AJK and Northern Areas of Pakistan is a lucrative telecoms market due to the historic absence of basic fixed telephone (wired) and a high remittance-rich local population with strong connection in the United Kingdom and other European countries.
This area was served by a semi-military, semi-government telecommunication organization that goes by the name of SCO - Special Communication Organization which used to had exclusive rights of telecommunication services in the region. Of late, SCO had collaborated with various companies for WLL, GSM and Internet (DSL & Dialup) to offer these services in the region.
Telekom blog is reporting on this further:
CMPak, the wireless operator formerly known as Paktel, has confirmed that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has amended its licence to allow it to provide wireless services in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and the Northern Areas (NA).
According to the CEO of CMPak, the new licenses will allow the company to extend its coverage to the scenic northern parts of the country. In February 2007 Millicom International Cellular (MIC) sold its 88.86% stake in Paktel to China Mobile Communications Corp for USD284 million in cash. In May 2007 China Mobile acquired the outstanding shares from the Arfeen Group (10%) and others. CMPak has embarked on an aggressive network expansion plan since the acquisition, with China Mobile expected to spend USD400 million in 2007 in expanding the network.
Managed services are thriving well in Pakistan. Ericsson has been reported to be given an extension of three years for the Managed Service that they had been providing to Warid Telecom in Pakistan. Warid’s network is multivendor and the managed service will cover this multivendor environment.
Managed services bode well for the local telecom environment as under these arrangements, a more professional entity takes charge of the engineering (and some times, even some non-engineering) functions of the telecom business house letting the original license holder customer take care on the core business of marketing and managing the local brand.
Generally in such deals, a large number of employees from the parent telecom company also get transfered to the company providing the Managed Services as regular or contract employees. Apart from become part of (normally) bigger and more structured companies, the practice also has the positive effects of enhancing the technical and administrative caliber of the local man power in general.
Paktel is reviving its marketing. In a show of ‘newage’ factor of the company, it has come up with a series of animated clips and talks about mobile manners. Such tangential approach, if sustained for a good amount of time, would generally work very effectively towards lifting Paktel’s recent past marketing pitches where they talked about ‘paisas’ and ’seconds’ and being ‘the cheapest’.
The ads are fun to watch:
I wonder if these animations have been produced in Pakistan or have been ‘imported’.
According to unconfirmed but reliable news, South Korea’s SK Telecom and the Arfeens Telecommunication Group of Pakistan have finalized a deal in which the South Korean player will acquire 70% stakes of the Instaphone (& Telecard?) along with management control. SK Telecom’s website states is global aspirations as:
SK Telecom revealed three key business areas to be concentrated on. These are the furtherance of our global reach by expanding internationally, developing the convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting, and searching for new business opportunities. With an aim toward becoming a major player in information communication under an economic umbrella that will be over all of East Asia, we are actively seeking multifaceted business opportunities in overseas markets.
Established in 1984, SK Telecom has a number of interesting networks under its belt including CDMA 2000, HSDPA etc. True to the uniqueness of South Korean market, the company offers a number of wired/wireless and application services. From Wikipedia:
The company’s current services include NATE, a wired and wireless integrated multi-Internet service, June, a multimedia service, MONETA, a financial service, Telematic service such as NATE Drive and even Digital Home service. In 2004, SK Telecom launched “Hanbyul,” the world’s first DMB satellite. The carrier currently provides satellite DMB to its subscribers through its subsidiary TU Media Corp. SK Telecom also offers a variety of internet services, many through its subsidiary SK Communications. Cyworld is one of the most popular blogging services in South Korea and NateOn is one of the most popular instant messengers.
The news further puts the number of new planned base stations to be erected by the revived company at 1500 ~ 1800.
In anticipation of a possible cash injection and to reduce time-to-service, Instaphone’s management had already finalized a hardware supply deal with Huawei for an all IP CDMA EvDO Rev.A earlier this year.
Arfeen Group manages three major voice and data brands in Pakistan (Instaphone, Telecard and Supernet) with Telecard’s being listed at the Karachi Stock Exchange. The group has been reportedly trying to strike expansion focused international telecommunication players but considered the management control to be most effective if it remained in the hands of the local minority stake holders. With a regulatory environment that has earned kudos in recent months for its consistency and neutrality and success stories of foreign managements (of Warid, Telenor etc), the demand of management control to the local minority partner was the major factor in not getting the previous deals closed.
The last un-taken group of Arfeens Telecom represent a power-house of telecommunication with all licenses tied to a single ownership flag - from the super-duper cellular to the mundane dialup ISP license.
The group has recently inducted new senior management that include Aamir Niazi as Vice Chairman. Aamir Niazi was associated with BOC Group for the past 18 years. A new CFO and a new CEO are being expected to be planted by the Koreans to give effect to the new ownership.
Pakistan has a considerable geographic spread and a populous rural footprint. If cellular services are to be taken forward, better, practically working coverage is required. Pakistani cellular operators understand this and are trying different strategies to cope with the challenge.
Back in 2002, Paktel and Instaphone entered into an infrastructure sharing agreement that allowed both the operators to use single civil facilities for putting up their cell sites. Ufone was a government owned concern so they had little incentive to move in any such direction. Mobilink was a GSM entity and was (at that time), the odd-man out from this alliance.
When Warid and Telenor entered Pakistani market, each had deep pockets filled with forex and lack of local industry trends and social domain information. They went ahead with building their own infrastructure initially.
Fast forward to mid 2007 and everyone now knows about Pakistan, its territory, politics and social landscape. Mobilink has emerged as a giant and the rest of the players are desperate enough to forge infrastructure level friendship!
First, Telenor and Ufone sign an MoU (and incorrectly call it ‘the first of its kind’, forgetting the Instaphone/Paktel deal on same lines way back in 2001~2002) to share their infrastructures.
Now Warid is reportedly joining the duo to form a troika which is very obviously set against Mobilink’s impressive coverage of 5,000 towns/locations across Pakistan. From the Daily Times’ report:
Currently Mobilink is covering over 5,000 cities and towns with over 6,000 sites, Ufone is working in over 750 cities and towns with 1,108 sites, Telenor is operating in over 1,100 cities and towns with 2,900 sites, Warid is active in over 210 cities with 1,200 sites and Paktel working in 218 cities with 893 sites. These all operators cover 70 percent of the population with 35 percent geographically. The MoU is the first of its kind between the two leading mobile phone operators in Pakistan. This is a welcome initiative for the industry, as it will help reduce costs of companies in developing separate sites for their networks.
Paktel has a different strategy for itself. With supposedly cash flow issues resolved, thanks to its China Mobile acquisition, the Paktel management is asking its employees to be part of the network in more than once sense. An email circulated to the employees to this effect states:
Dear All,
You are all aware that with a view of Network expansion, CMPak has awarded contracts to various vendors for establishing ‘Base Stations’. Consequently, we would be establishing sites throughout the country. To make the employees as partners, the Management encourages their participation in site acquisition process. If any of the friends / acquaintances is willing ‘To Let’ property (on rental basis to CMPak) for establishing the sites, employees are encouraged to forward details of such property.
Management is pleased to announce that if any of the sites (referred by the employees) is judged as ‘Prime Site’, the referring employee will be offered ‘Special Reward’ by the vendor. However employees are strictly forbidden to contact technical staff i.e O & M and Roll out Teams.
The MoUs might be a sad news for aspiring three-storied house owners each of whom had been wishing to generate an additional income of around Rs 40,000 ~ 50,000 per month by renting out her rooftop for the cell site (and, in some cases, enjoying free generator-based electricity during the frequent power outages in some cases!) . However, this should bring a sigh of relief to concerned citizens about the deteriorating cities’ landscapes which, now across Pakistan, are littered with such towers with zero efforts made toward any possible camouflaging of the same.
Pak Datacom is announcing that they are installing an iDirect VSAT hub.
Insufficient fiber and other wired infrastructure, limited range of existing terrestrial wireless technologies and a boom in ICT industry in Pakistan is causing an upsurge in the satellite services.
Banks and other financial institutions are one of the major drivers for remote area data connectivity market. New initiatives by the Government to introduce electronic management in its working is the often considered as the second largest factor driving the satellite services consumption in Pakistan.
Modern VSAT hubs are intelligent entities that make better use of the expensive and scarce satellite bandwidth resources by intelligently distributing the same to a large number of customers that are equipped with smart satellite terminals - costs of which is coming down as third-party CPEs made to a number of standards are getting cheaper. Installation cost and complexity for the remote sites is also coming down allowing better confidence towards the service by the end customer.
Lately, a number of network service providers have installed VSAT Hubs to service the growing data services sector. Supernet (iDirect), Comstar, Pak Datacom (wing of PTCL) and Multinet all have either installed or are in the process of installing VSAT hubs to complement their existing wired and wireless services.
The explosive growth of cellular services in Pakistan has resulted in the companies’ new quest to reach the untapped rural markets and in the absence of optical fiber backhaul, VSAT backhaul have picked up big times. Mobilink, Ufone and Telenor all have placed huge orders of VSAT backhuals for their base stations in far flung areas such as FATA and Azad Jammu Kashmir. The volume of the business has taken the otherwise go-slow network service providers by surprise and in certain cases, single orders placed by the cellular giants have been comparable with the annual volume of business done by the network service provider.
“The market will dive down to the ‘50 paisas per minute, anywhere in Pakistan’ level - in five years. ” These were the ‘prophetic’ words that were ‘very in’ two years ago when two additional licenses were given to Warid and Telenor in Pakistan. Telecom executives would announced this to each other. Little did they know that they are only half correct. The 50 paisa per minute anywhere would come but that would not take the whole five years!
The competition in the Pakistani cellular sector is fueling the price war like never before. Although the ‘aath anay’ (old local term for half a rupee) milestone is still not here, the prices have come down to a point where the marketeers of the services can bring in the 50 paisa mention in their sales pitches with fine prints telling us that this is for 30 seconds, on-net and/or for close user groups of friends and families.
CMPak (previously known as Paktel) announced their new package plans which flashes the 50 paisas rate.
CMPak Limited - formerly Paktel and China Mobile’s first venture outside China ñhas introduced a new tariff package named “Power Package”, said a statement on Monday.
It said the package offered its subscribers 50paisas per 30 seconds (on net) the lowest call rates in the market - from 7 pm to 10 pm. Moreover a customer can enjoy three (on-net) friends and family numbers for the same rate throughout the day, it added.
Lower rates, while a welcome news to the subscribers, would also mean that operators would have to be vigilant on their spendings and accurate in their planning and execution. This would also mean that the operators would have to pay attention to value added services and other revenue enhancers.
AFP is carrying a report that mentions CMPak’s resolve to invest another $500 million in its Pakistan operations. Rural penetration is being cited as one of the main components of the expansion thrust:
World’s biggest telecom operator China mobile having 320 million subscribers in China plans to invest another $ 500 million next year as the investment atmosphere is very conducive here. Executive Director China Mobile Pakistan Sikandar Naqvi Thursday told CNBC channel that a sum of $ 1.2 billion has already been invested in Pakistan.
This, read along with the statement from the China Mobile Chairman that China Mobile sees their Pakistan operations as a valuable experience for its subsequent international ventures, will surely put the existing big boys of cellular services in Pakistan like Mobilink and Ufone on high-alert and may be give them sleepless nights.
Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI), as quoted by Dialy Times, says that Pakistan imported cellular phones worth $ 1 billion during the current fiscal year.
A few days ago, Daily Times was reporting that Pakistan imported cell phone worth just around $780,000 which was clearly illogical.
Ericsson is announcing that CMPak (formerly Paktel) has awarded its expansion project in the south of Pakistan to the company. Ericsson will provide GSM and microwave transmission network equipment to CMPak for its expansion project that will cover 312 cities of Sindh and Baluchistan that form the southern part of Pakistan.
CMPak has awarded the expansion project of northern wing of its network to Alcatel-Lucent that we covered here.
The news bodes well for the industry in terms of more jobs in the sector particularly in the outsourced contract projects segment. The news also mean that increased network capacity will drive down the cost for the consumer due to increased competition and force the cellular operators to focus more on value added services on their network beyond just voice.
Let us hope Mr Leghari can lure in cellular manufacturers to start making terminals in Pakistan so that the import bill for these terminals can be minimized.
Alcatel-Lucent is announcing that China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak) has selected the company for provisioning of GSM/GPRS/EDGE equipment for the expansion of the CMPak services in the populous north of the country (Pakistan).
Summary: According to the details, Alcatel-Lucent (through its Chinese presence of Alcatel Shanghai Bell) will provide its high density GSM solution which is needed for higher density urban cities of Pakistan. Alcatel-Lucent is also providing PDH and SDH equipment for the transmission requirements of the new expansion project. Apart from hardware, the company is also providing network optimization, support and general project management.
A news item in Daily Times says that Pakistan imported cellular phones worth around $728,000 in the last nine month which according to the news article is 28% more than what we imported last year during the same period.
Umm..sounds strange. The reported figures are not even close to a million dollars. Either the report used the figures of just one vendor or it really got confused with the facts. With an average cost of $100 (Rs 6,000), this figure means that we imported just around 7,280 mobiles? Quite unlikely.
With the average joe Teefa on the street buying a new cellular phone worth $60 ~ $100, no local production of cellular terminals, PTA complaining about insufficient record keeping of SIM issuance and millions of users being added to the networks month by month, even with tax and paperwork evasion, the figures must at least be in tens of millions of dollars.
