Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 25, 2008 at 10:44 PM
A Guest post by Shoby Awan
Most of the people who use internet are well aware of “Orkut” a social networking website. But besides social networking this website is being used for immoral activities, which is a great threat to the future of our young generation. I have been using Orkut for last 4 years and spent a lot of time on this website. Amongst variety of people, I came across, some are really good and helpful and using this social network in positive manner and to help each other. But some of them in fact most of them are using this portal in a wrong way.
Today these bad activities that I have been witnessing for a long time made me to write this article. May be I’ll be able to draw net user’s attention towards this and may I could save someone’s life. But let me share my experience and research on Orkut with you.
In past four years I have gone through many experiences on Orkut. Initially I didn’t have much knowledge about this site. Somehow I got an invitation through an email sent to me by a friend of mine and I created a profile. I knew a few friends of mine who already had profiles there, so I added them and then I came to know that one can view others profile and add them as friends. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 24, 2008 at 7:20 PM
Guest post by Naeem Pani Wala
When I decided to join advertising industry, 12 years back, I was criticized by many of my close friends. They thought it was a bubbling industry then, which may collapse any time. Even when I was in London for higher studies, the media analysts were not in favor of a media career in a country like Pakistan. Let me straight away come to the point and see if the situation has changed or not?
Although here in Karachi, the situation is not so bad as reported in Islamabad, where my friends are not contented at all with the current situation. Karachi as a hub of business and advertising is in a very strong position with over 50 advertising agencies from very big to very small ones (by small company I mean one room and even one man company handling just one client).
A year ago or so, advertising business was at boom with a race of claims of developments and prosperity. Those were the days of “Khushal Pakistan” campaign, with mega advertising budgets from the Musharraf backed government of PMLQ. This ‘Khushal Pakistan’ campaign fruited many of advertising companies which were close to the ruling party then. Especially in Punjab some special schemes were introduced to collect the funds for development, though these funds were never utilized and details are yet to be made public. So in short, people earned millions out of our national wealth. There are examples of those without a motorbike 10 years ago now own Mercedes. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Reality Bites on November 6, 2008 at 3:56 AM
“After weapons’ manufacturing industry, ‘Telco Industry’ is the world largest domain, said a renowned Telecom analyst of Asia, and in deed Telco industry has been playing major role in market & benefiting consumers in day to day operations.
Call : Mom , lecture ended please pick me up from university, ok son , I will pick you up …
SMS: So do you agree? - yes , then Deal Done! …
SMS: thank you I have made the payment.
Call: What happened? Its accident, ok let me call 15 or 1122 to inform them about the injuries and losses & this list goes on….! Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 3, 2008 at 5:35 AM
“Chinese will manage Pakistan’s market, and they will outplay everyone… They know how to get it”, I was told this by Mr. Frederic Rose, President then, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel-Lucent’s flagship company in China. He was here in Islamabad to sign one billion dollars network expansion contract assigned to Alcatel-Lucent by China Mobile, which had recently acquired Paktel.
He replied me up given line when I had asked him that Pakistan’s market is already well saturated, how come a cellular company starting from scratch will be able to compete with Giants like Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone, Warid… given that, all these four companies bear very strong financial background, as well expertise of running GSM networks in multiple regions.
I am wondering now that how true Mr. Rose was. Yes, China Mobile has proven itself as a brand now, and it looks like they are going to give tough time to other cellular companies in coming days.
The hardest part for China Mobile was to rebuild the image that had been lost by Paktel; often we see, it’s easy to make a new building, than of restructuring a damaged one.
Launch
I was discussing this success of Zong with Babar Bhatti, who was kind enough to give me time before leaving for US tomorrow, and he rightly spotted that China Mobile didn’t rush in launching its brand. Zong took its full time in preparation and came up with a very powerful launch campaign, though we found that campaign as copied one, but until then it had left its impact on Pakistanis. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Reality Bites on November 3, 2008 at 4:17 AM
It is estimated that almost 19000 cell sites have been installed by five mobile operators in different urban and rural areas of the Pakistan, in which Mobilink is on the top and Ufone fallowing on the same track with almost more than 4536 cell sites and others seems to be growing.
It is always observed that network coverage played important role for cellular operators to be a market leader with the help of value added services, as the network coverage remains the key element for increments in subscribers within months.
In this customer acquisition formula 1 race, where everyone is trying to compete each other with all tweaks and tricks they can play in grabbing customers from other operators and even attract new acquisitions to increase more revenues.
According to Ministry of Information Technology Mobile cellular policy, Telco operators are bound to roll out at least 70% network coverage of tehsil headquarters in four years with minimum 10% tehsils in all provinces. Most probably all cellular companies have attained this level in coverage roll out plan, but question is still remained unanswered, how quality of the network has been maintained so far?
Because voice distortion, call hangings, anonymous connectivity, call connection time, air interface blocking, call completion rate, call quality etc are still the same issues for customers faced in rural and urban areas. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Abu Asma on October 31, 2008 at 8:20 PM
Let me introduce Islamabad based Abu Asma, who is associated with advertising for 12 years now and is currently a Creative Director in a leading advertising Agency. Let’s welcome Abu Asma as latest addition in ProPakistani’s Team.
It is a general view point that money making in Telecom Sector is very simple – they lay down their infrastructure once, and then they can reap money for ever. Indeed this phenomenon is logical, but in real this might not be the case with every venture as some towering expectations might get crashed in days.
With multiple telecom players available in Pakistan, all the telecom companies are fighting hard to increase their share in market. It is very interesting to see that now mobile companies are offering call prices in Paisas to attract more customers and their strength to sell their products by advertising.
As a creative professional most of the time I wonder that big companies just believe on ambush marketing with out localizing the content of their adverts – also, without keeping their customers in mind. Today we have selected Ufone to discuss its advertising campaigns and their approach towards TVCs. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 27, 2008 at 2:42 AM
We had covered this Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) market review few months ago, however, changes take place in days now. As the energy crisis continue in Pakistan, in fact it has gone worse, people are again rushing towards UPS markets to get themselves electricity backups.
Thanks to winter, general people may not require UPS units as they did in hot summer, but businesses, students, and those who want to remain in tact with their electrical devices are in crucial situation due to unannounced and long run power failures.
Okay, I am covering only UPS market review, hopefully I will bring forward Generators’ market review as well in coming days, but lets focus on options and prices for UPS units in this article.
We saw two very significant things, one that UPS market is undergoing tremendous rush, and same is the case with prices. By the way, these prices went down in month of Ramadan (as there were no power outages then), but once again UPS businesses have gone high.
We noted that average cost of a Rs. 10,000 UPS has increased by almost 30 percent when compared to prices in May-June 2008. Retailers say this increment is due to the fact that manufacturers have increased prices of raw material on pretext of higher production cost due to higher imports of accessories.
A survey of retailers unveiled that UPS with a capacity of running two fans and two lights is hot item, and its sale has gone as high as 30 percent. It merits mentioning that this is least powered UPS available in the market, and is mostly used by small to mid sized shopkeepers and home users.
It merits mentioning here that there are two types of UPS available, imported ones and locally assembled. Retailers said that buyers prefer locally made UPS units for two reasons. 1 – They are inexpensive, 2 – Imported UPS units come with no warranty, hence more risk for buyers.
As the demand is increasing, there are more people getting involved in making of these local made UPS units. This retailer named, Hafiz Imran confirmed that there are tens of UPS manufacturing plants working in Rawalpindi. By the way, Daily Time lately reported that there are around 45 manufacturing units of UPS are working in the different parts of the Karachi only as cottage industry. The wholesalers have doubled their orders in order to meet the growing demand.
It was also reported that there comes lots bugs and after sale complains due to ordinary quality and unqualified technicians who make these UPS units in lesser time.
With UPS units, there come batteries, which are used with UPS units to keep your electrical devices alive – and scenario is not different of batteries as well, as prices have gone high here too.
So this is what the market has been undergoing, now check out these tips that you must consider before buying a UPS
Things to consider for Buying a UPS
- Try to put minimum load on UPS, that is don’t try to put all electrical devices on your UPS, instead make sure that only power critical devices are on UPS
- Once you have decided what items you will be running on UPS, calculate their power load. For this, don’t rely on UPS shops, instead ask for electrician in your colony and let him calculate the power load that you will be running on UPS. For instance, a computer with 17 inch monitor is likely to require 400 to 450 watts. Similarly, calculate your entire load and make sure what power do you require from this UPS.
- Go into main electrical markets of your city, instead of your corner electrical shop. Check around in couple of shops for the rates for the power your need. Let’s assume you need a UPS of 1000 Watts, then ask around what quotes you get.
- Please note that there are NO OFFICIAL RATES, so you will have to do little research to save you couple of thousand Rupees
- Please make sure that battery is nothing to do with your UPS. Your batteries will be responsible for backup time. So if you purchase a low ampere battery, it will give you lesser time and vice versa.
- Once your UPS is ready, make sure that it is giving output of exactly what you had asked for. For this purpose you can keep along your cousin or friend who knows a little about electrical meters, ask retailer (shopkeeper) to verify that this UPS is giving out proper voltages.
- If you are planning to use computer with this UPS, make sure that UPS unit supports it. For this direct the shopkeeper to make it computer complaint. (They make little configuration changes in your UPS, which prevents your Computer rebooting when electricity goes down.
Prices for UPS Units with Built in Dry Batteries
These UPS units come with built in Dry Batteries, and stabilizers. Means you get a once pack solution and simply take it home. But make sure that back-up duration for Buil in Dry Batteries’ UPS units is between 10 to 15 minutes only - Meaning that these are mainly for computers and for just saving your files and allowing you enough time to shut down your computer. (In case you need more backup time, then check for below given UPS prices that come without Batteries – and you can add up batteries to get more back up time)
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Posted by: Reality Bites on October 16, 2008 at 6:50 AM
According to PTA’s very recent public stats, the total numbers of cellular subscriber in Pakistan are soon going to hit 90 million mark. The saturated Telco’s market of Pakistan is now asking for QoS (Quality of Service), Continuous improvement in network infrastructure and customer service & care programs.
If we randomly analyze the Pakistan Telco’s market, we will get the findings that almost all of the major factors have been utilized. Recently, we all have observed new launches of Mobile Telco, though market was expecting huge change in pricing structures and in some DATA services to be free, but results were not as anticipated.
According to an estimation, it has been observed that most of the cellular subscribers utilize these connections as the secondary choice (few people may have different opinion here) and they registers every number as a habitual behavior. Thus investing millions of dollars in the same arena for customer acquisition is no more tactful attitude as it was before.
As pricing competition in Pakistan’s cellular market has almost broken every global record. The cheaper products & Services offer to try and beat off rivals’ offers, it’s a profit killer.
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