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: Muhammad Ali Raza on November 24, 2008 at 3:02 AM
In response to an action by HMG, Indian script kiddie, who hacked OGRA’s website, A Pakistani Group called PCA (Pakistan Cyber Army) has reportedly hacked at least five Indian websites including http://www.ongcindia.com/ - Indian Oil and Natural Gas website.
Other websites which were hacked by Pakistanis include
http://www.syscontech.in/
http://www.iirs.gov.in/
http://www.ctram.indianrail.gov.in/
http://www.kvrtm.org.in/ Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 24, 2008 at 2:07 AM
Bloggers in Pakistan today proved their existence in real lives, when more than 100 bloggers engaged themselves in an exciting gathering at SC-4 Hall, LUMS – Lahore. This meet-up is meant to be the start of a journey that was badly required from a community that has been actively playing its role to fulfill Pakistan’s online needs.
Though bloggers have been aggressively reporting about social, cultural, educational, industrial, business and political issues coming across, but they had been missing a very important part – ‘ in person interaction with the real world’ which they accomplished today; thanks to Badar Khusnood, Pakistan Country Consultant, Google, Inc., CIO Pakistan and hosted by LUMS IEEE Students.
Meet-up basically aimed at connecting bloggers with each other to better perform in terms of content quality and revenues by sharing their experiences and expertise. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 21, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has been advantaged to hold tax amount of Rs. 9,867,865,916, which is payable to FBR, until court concludes anything over the issue.
It may be recalled that Federal Board of Revenue had repeatedly asked Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to pay its due taxes, valuing Rs. 9.86 billion.
In response to FBR’s tax collection call, PTA took the matter in both High Court and Appellate Tribunals, and believed that PTA is not liable to pay any tax as it is authority itself.
While FBR’s official, who is managing the case from FBR’s side, told us that PTA is not paying its taxes for last 10 years, and this tax amount has reached almost Rs. 10 billion mark. It merits mentioning that PTA had paid Rs. 1 billion as an installment, but afterwords telecom authority is using delaying tactics to avoid paying taxes.
“Telecom authority is claiming exception which is not due at all; exemption from tax is not available to government authorities as it was withdrawn by virtue of overriding provision of section 54 of Income Tax Ordinance 2001”, added FBR’s official.
PTA’s spokesman was not available for the comment.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 20, 2008 at 3:39 PM
Financial conditions of cellular companies in Pakistan seems to be unstable as most of cellular companies are operating in loss despite significant increment in their revenues over the time; but these revenues are leveled by increased operating expenses, network expansion and depreciation i local currency.
Operating expanses of cellular companies have increased due to inflation and depreciation of Pakistani currency. This depreciation in currency is effecting cellular companies in two ways, first the cost of machinery and infrastructure gets higher, secondly those companies that depend on foreign loans from sources outside Pakistan bear huge loss due to depreciation of currency. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Reality Bites on November 20, 2008 at 2:47 AM
In my last article about Pakistani Cellular Help Lines, we had discussed about call center’s ordinary services, complexities, incomplete information and how customers get bad impression by all these elements. Today let’s focus on reasons for these scenarios and some solutions.
Improper Trainings:
Trainings given to customer service representatives are just for the sake of covering duty and completing requirements. Trainers, most of the time, are interested towards the completion of whole training content. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Reality Bites on November 19, 2008 at 9:30 AM
In Pakistan, charging Help-Line calls is nothing new to customers – they are sort of used to such charges, even then they are further frustrated by complex menus (especially in Ufone’s case) to get connected to Customer Service Representative; the process may take from 2 minutes to 22 minutes and even beyond. How customers handle to such complexities? It’s simple for them to hang-up the call and become disloyal to that Telco Company. By the way, charging helpline calls was first time started by Mobilink, on 7th August to be exact.
As, customers in Pakistan are getting aware and more familiar with consumer rights, such dissatisfaction result into higher churn rate. Because, when customer is disloyal due to ordinary services (that he is paying for) he suddenly leaves the company as soon as he/she hear good word of mouth for some other company that not only provide better packages but has a very fast customer service system. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 18, 2008 at 5:15 PM
We have been seeing Mobilink losing customers in recent months, hence the revenues too, resultantly; the impact can be felt on overall performance of Orascom, the parent company of Mobilink.
Recently, Orascom Telecom (OTH) reported its 3rd quarter, 2008 profit of US$ 90.5 million - down by 28% compared to same period last year – while revenues reached US$1.37 billion in Q3 2008. Mobilink’s subscribers reached 31,359,049 mark out of 79,267,452 Orascom subscribers in 6 regions.
Mobilink reported ARPU of 2.9 $, lesser as compared to 3.9 $, same period last year. The decrease in ARPU in Pakistan is mainly due to the decreasing value of Pakistani Rupee against the US Dollar as well as rising inflation and an increase in sales tax which has further impacted consumers’ spends. Continue Reading This Story
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