Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 4, 2008 at 10:48 AM
Businesses in Pakistan are now making themselves ready for internet; many of them have already proved their presence on internet. Similarly, Print Media organizations in Pakistan are excessively investing their time and workforce to make themselves available on internet.
Newspaper readers, specifically Urdu newspaper readers have multiple options to remain updated with happenings in conventional way. They can now read newspapers online exactly the same way as they appear in print version.
Daily Jang, Dawn, Daily Jinnah (Jinnah is currently offline due to maintenance) and Daily Express update their e-versions daily. Good thing about these papers is, that you can access back dated newspaper editions as well. You would be amazed to know that Daily Express has record of every edition published since July 22, 2006, rest of papers offer 7 days’ record.
- Dawn: http://epaper.dawn.com (Free Registration Required)
- Jang: http://ejang.jang.com.pk/ (Free Registration Required)
- Express: http://express.com.pk/ (No Registration Required)
- Daily Jinnah: http://epaper.dailyjinnah.com/ (No Registration Required)
- Daiky Waqt: http://www.dailywaqt.com/ (No Registration Required)
So give these free online resources a try, and let me know if there is any other paper also offering its e-version.
Meanwhile, check following scan of front page from Dawn from 2020 (Got this image from WCCFtech.com)
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 3, 2008 at 9:30 AM
A month ago or so Interior Ministry of Pakistan came up with a solution to curb illegal sale of SIMs by directing cellular companies to send SIMs directly to postal addresses instead of directly selling them at franchises or other outlets.
This was an extreme action that could be taken, and apparently cellular companies succeeded in not implementing the practice. But now, there comes another directive to stop selling pre-activated SIMs, and this time Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior has passed these directions to PTA to be implemented with immediate effect.
Business Recorder has reported on this and says that standing committee had a meeting with Chairman PTA, Chairman Nadra, Ministry of Information Technology and conclusively directives were passed to PTA to ensure the end of sale of pre-activated SIMs within four weeks.
So now expect deactivated SIMs from stores when you buy them, and you will have to activate SIMs by providing your verification and providing a secret code. Cellular companies are yet to reach a point to follow the practice.
So this was about this particular development that took place. Now let’s discuss current situation of illegal SIMs.
I have previously written about the illegal sale of SIMs and measures taken by the government and cellular companies to resolve the issue. But seems like we are in middle of no where… you would be wondering why I said so? Okay read on to know this
It has been told to media that cellular companies have blocked around 7.1 million unregistered and unauthorized SIM cards of different Cellular-phone Companies issued till April 31, 2008, besides thousands have been verified and registered.
Out of these 7.1 million blocked SIMs, a victim was one of my friends who had been using his SIM for almost three years. He believed that SIM was registered in his name, and there was no good reason for blocking it. Anyhow, he can get a new SIM, not a big deal, but when he called his bank to activate his credit card for shopping online, (you may know that normally credit cards are not allowed to be used online, banks activate this service on request) they asked him to call from the number that was associated with credit card , or they will not activate him the service.
He even spoke to their TL (Team Lead), and told them that his registered number has been blocked and he can not call them from that particular number, but his pleas were put over deaf ears… and the response was “Sir, this is part of our policy, and we can not help you even our bank president asks us to do so”
This is one known complexity out of many unknown, if we kept on blocking these SIMs. I windup my post here, leaving a question open… that is “Is there any Ideal Solution for the situation created other than re-registering all numbers??? “
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 3, 2008 at 6:31 AM
Geo TV has been airing a famous Islamic TV Show named as “Aalim Online”, which in fact inspired me to name this post as “Peer Online”. (I just took the name, other wise there resembles nothing between this particular show and my this post)
Businesses in Pakistan are in state of transformation, which are turning their concentration towards the internet now, where they obviously get more target audience, hence more leads converting into sales. Though we lack extensive e-commerce infrastructure in our country, but even though medium and large sized businesses are demonstrating their existence on web.
Similarly, our Peers have started adopting internet too, and now they are broadcasting their publicity messages on internet; mainly through BULK emailing; but soon we may expect plenty of websites dedicated to these Peers and their quick solutions to every problems.
Apparently, these Peers spend handsome amount of money for broadcasting their email messages (let me mention here that many email broadcasters charge Rs. 5000 for 10000 emails). These heavy advertisement budgets actually leave a question mark on their legitimacy and the claims they make in emails such as
- Solution to Every Problem
- Meet your love in only 7 days
- Make your husband obey you for rest of life and so on…
These emails normally leave a Mobile Number at the end as a point of contact…! While one must provide a physical address while doing a remote business. So things are quite confusing here…!
This is a very sensitive issue, so I don’t want to discuss it more, but I advice my readers to act sensibly when you get such an email with high claims and low rates.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 30, 2008 at 6:34 AM
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority will take severe action against those cellular companies that use deceptive marketing strategies to acquire consumers’ attention by falsely claimed or misleading statements and/or facts. This was communicated to all cellular mobile operators of Pakistan through an official notice sent on August 29, 2008
A high level source from a cellular company told that an official letter was sent to them from PTA which said that authority has been observing that some Cellular companies are engaged in such advertisement campaigns which are misleading for general public and are of deceptive nature in its content.
Source confirmed that PTA had already issued warnings to mobile companies, on which telcos paid very little attention and continued their practices to print / or-air such advertisements which enormously increased consumer complaints and questions by the public representatives in the Parliament.
Current notice from PTA further said that print and electronic advertisements published / aired by cellular companies do not contain the details of applicable term and conditions along with the rates or these are vertically printed in unreadable small font making it difficult for the consumers to comprehend the relevant charges as well as the terms and conditions.
Notice asked all cellular companies to make sure that such associated conditions of the advertisements that can have a significant influence on the decision making of the consumer must be disclosed. In addition, the tariff and unit of charging should be in legible font, making it convenient for a consumer to comprehend the applicable terms.
Notice said that all cellular companies are directed to ensure strict compliance with the directives given in the notice. Otherwise authority may take severe action in accordance with the provisions of the Pakistan Telecommunication Act and may conduct public hearing on this.
According to the Telecommunication Act of Pakistan, protecting consumers’ rights is a function of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, and for the purpose they had been issuing several notices to cellular companies. However, authority has not issued any show-cause notice or fined any cellular company for deceptive marketing as of now.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 29, 2008 at 11:10 AM
In a recent development to tackle the economic crisis in our country, the government has decided to impose duties on 380 items (called as luxury items). My focus point is the handset industry that has seen a flat tax imposition of Rs. 250 per handset, regardless of its price or model.
This recent increment in tax is other than the one that was imposed in budget 2008 @ Rs. 500 per mobile phone. Hence the total tax on the import of a mobile handset would be now Rs. 750.
I have discussed before about heavy taxes on Telecom services, handsets and telecom equipment and their bad impact on our cellular growth rate and the revenues that our cellular companies have been earning.
Besides, the worst thing in this flat increment is that it will hit both the rich and poor alike, though the government says that taxes are on luxury items but they need to correct themselves as mobile phone is not a luxury item anymore.
Recent increment in taxes on handset is going to badly disturb the prices of low end phones. And we may see a bad impact on the sales of handset and ultimately the cellular connections.
Via [Pro Pakistan]
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 27, 2008 at 6:31 PM
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is now capable of automated blocking of Internet Protocol Addresses (IPs), that carry illegal voice traffic that is termination and/or origination of voice packets in a bid to check grey traffic flowing into the country, as reported in ‘The News’ PTA says that the facility will be operational within the next few days.
Paper says that PTA Chairman Dr Muhammad Yaseen announced this during a meeting with the CEOs of major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of the country.
Chairman requested all the Internet Service Providers to declare their IP addresses along-with the antecedents of their customers so that illegal telecom traffic could be monitored. It was emphasized that the operators should oversee their customers to make sure they are not involved in grey traffic termination. He sought the operators’ cooperation to stem the menace of grey telephony.
It merits mentioning here that PTA announced publicly that all (registered) call centers should provide their IP addresses to PSEB to make sure that their voice traffic is not blocked.
I am not sure if this system is capable of detecting voice packets sent by Yahoo, Skype, netmeeting etc… Hope these programmes would be allowed for home users.
Since the inception of technical facility in May 2008 at the PTA, the IP addresses found to be involved in illegal activities were being blocked manually and in the process, over 14 million minutes (worth around Rs100 million) have been saved on monthly basis. Now these would be automatically blocked if any IP, not authorized to carry voice, is found doing so. Under the current policy, only LDIs and international call centers are authorized to carry voice across national boundaries.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 26, 2008 at 7:53 AM
Guest Post by Changez Khan
4th InfoSec 2008 International Conference on Information Security, co-organized by National Response Center for Cyber Crimes (NR3C), FIA is going to happen tomorrow (August 27, 2008) at Marriott Hotel, Islamabad, Pakistan. This time, the audience will be really shock to see a controversial person in Pakistani Internet Community delivering his presentation on a topic named as: “Cyber Crime Prosecution: Investigation, Forensics Procedure and the Court”.
The organizers of the event may lack the information that this person, a legal expert, named as Zahid Jamil is behind the self proclaimed Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (DNDRC); who is allegedly involved in very serious kinds of Cyber Squatting activities by forming DNDRC under the domain names of DNDRC.com, DNDRC.net, DNDRC.org, DNDRC.info, having confusingly similar domains to the ADNDRC.org the ICANN approved organization.
He has allegedly hijacked .PK domain names such as BUDGET.COM.PK and DJUICE.PK to earn easy money of about 800 USD per case but after receiving tough time by original registrant of DJUICE.PK on his unilateral and biased decision, Zahid Jamil has reportedly closed this business due to severe loss of credibility among the Internet community of Pakistan.
When E-Crime Bill was introduced in the country, he opposed it aggressively on different forums but on the other hand, he is misusing it by threatening the Pakistani people with it. At ICANN, Zahid Jamil admits as “I have also been working informally with the Federal Investigation Agency’s National Response to Cyber Crime Cell (NR3C) in certain cyber crime cases.” http://gnso.icann.org/council/soi/jamil-soi-28jun08.shtml
The real owner of a hijacked domain had said on a public forum as: “Yesterday I have received some serious threats via telephonic calls from the DNDRC (Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center for .PK) domains regarding my complaint on the domain; they have pressurized me to withdraw my complaint. As a matter of fact I had already proved them that I have never been contacted by them on this domain dispute…” The DNDRC should have no right to make phone calls to the victims of their decisions to further threaten them.
Zahid Jamil is apparently also involved in Typosquatting, also called URL Hijacking, which, according to Wikipedia, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Zahid Jamil owned the domain name of DOMIANNAMEDISPUTERESOLUTION.COM (with misspell of DomAin as DomIan) to redirect visitors of DOMAINNAMEDISPUTERESOLUTION.COM, registered by a US based Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C, a Top IP Law Firm of the world located at UN Plaza, New York. http://www.frosszelnick.com
Zahid Jamil also used to impress the Pakistani community as a member of an ICANN constituency (the only member in that constituency from Pakistan) with voting rights in the ICANN structure” but very few people know that Mr. Tim Ruiz of ICANN has replied him while discussing Revised Community Travel Support Procedure for FY09 as: “Zahid, If the policy work of ICANN is not core to your business, why are you involved?( Reference: http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg05345.html)
There are also reports circulating that Zahid Jamil is involved in another illegal online Business at www.dotpk.pk which holds Domain Names of Pakistani Business Community illegally like: ARYDIGITAL.PK, DAEWOO.PK, HOLIDAYINN.PK, BEACONHOUSE.PK, LUMS.PK and many more. He is securing the money by selling those held domains, eg: GEONEWS.PK, GOOGLE.PK, NOKIA.PK, etc. By registering .PK Domain Names of Trade Mark Holders with proxy names, he don’t left any option to the business community but to buy domain names at DOTPK.PK or to consult his DNDRC whose fee is 800 USD per case.
Thus, due to his controversial role in cybersquating of his illegal businesses, we should object his any role at national and international level which could harm public interests at the large. A person who himself is violating internet law and openly examples cybersquating should be discouraged to represent at InfoSec 2008.
If someone is interested to know more about him, just type in Google Zahid Jamil DNDRC.
Disclaimer: I found this article of controversial nature and ProPakistani.com does not own and may not agree with discussion carried away in this article by the original writer. Furthermore, I also discovered that some of the content in this article was taken from Pakpoint.com and mobizong.com
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 22, 2008 at 10:48 PM
You would be amazed to hear that a contributor claims that he has been using Free and Unlimited Mobilink to Mobilink Calls for last two months… wow! That’s really amazing, and i would love to test this trick.
How it Works:
Step 1: First of all activate Mobitunes Service, yes mobi tunes is the main thing required in this trick. Once you MobiTune Service is activated, don’t change your default Mobi Tune, which would be “Hum Bolain Mohabbat ki Zuban”….!
Step 2: Now call from your friend’s number to your own number… and you will hear “Hum Bolain Mohabat ki Zuban”
After a while, in 20/22 seconds, the automated voice will speak up and say “Apkey Matloba Number number sey jawab musul nehi ho rha”
At very this instace, when operator say “App kay matlooba number….” pick your phone … and your call will be connected, and you can talk freely without eyeing your call timer.
You can also note the time, about how long Mobi Tune is played before the operator says “App kay matlooba number…” for example its 30 seconds… just note this time. Now whenever someone will call you, you are supposed to pick the phone after 30 seconds, and allow your friends to call you for free…!
I will test it myself too, but let me know if its working… Remember its a hack, so enjoy unlimited calling, until its debugged…!
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