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 2, 2008 at 8:44 AM
We spoke a lot about PTA’s role in Telecom industry of Pakistan, where it took plenty of initiatives for the betterment of industry and our national economy, but on other hands, telecom companies very boldly kept on challenging the authority by not accepting its directives.
Very recent example of this disrespect is demonstrated by PTCL, when the landline company was directed to quit its “Pakistan Package” by August 31, 2008. However, it was not happened so…! (and this direction came after a reconsideration request by PTCL… hence it was second directive from authority)
To recall our memories, lets review the content of that official letter sent by PTA to PTCL Dated: July 30, 2008 – Ref: 15-18/08(CA)/PTA
Authority regret to inform PTCL that request for reconsideration of PTA’s decision (over the withdrawal of Pakistan Package) cannot be accepted to and authority’s directives dated 25th June, 2008 should be implemented in true letter spirit by PTCL. However, as PTCL has still not informed its subscribers about the withdrawal of Pakistan Package as directed by authority, company is directed to publicize the effect of abolishing Pakistan Package within 10 days of this letter and the Pakistan Package shall be withdrawn by PTCL by 31st August, 2008
There could be two good reasons that PTCL did not withdraw Packistan Package, either they took stay from court, or in other case they just didn’t bother much about these letters they receive from PTA on daily basis…! or Maybe, they asked for another reconsideration…!
I leave it upto my readers to decide the rest ….
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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 22, 2008 at 7:32 AM
ProPakistani.com conducted a survey asking its visitors to give feedback on what they think is the best cellular company of Pakistan.
Survey form was displayed to all visitors of ProPakistani.com and remained active for 30 days. Poll widget which bounds anyone to re-cast his vote from same IP received total of 1611 votes in the specified time.
Ufone has been surprisingly voted as the best cellular company of Pakistan with total of 608 votes, which are 38 percent of total votes. That’s remarkable, in my opinion that’s due to the simple pricing; little number of packages and their SMS bundles did the trick in getting popularity amongst the consumers.
Telenor managed to set at second slot with total of 286 (18 percent) votes. Again I think their SMS bundles worked for Telenor, their Rs. 1 package is also popular amongst the masses.
Warid remained at third position with very little margin, and got 274 votes that’s just 12 votes behind Telenor.
I am again surprised by Mobilink’s popularity and users’ experience with largest cellular company of the country. They got 239 votes, which are merely 15 percent of total votes. I won’t say anything about Mobilink, but the poll reflects that they are loosing the grip over customers.
Considering a new entrant, Zong did well by getting 193 votes. Their Book Your Number Service is relatively popular than many other value added services they provide.
Last stood the Instaphone with 11 votes!
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 19, 2008 at 7:07 PM
As we see internet usage tremendously growing in developing countries, which have normally confined bandwidth to share with its users. Pakistan is one of such countries, which is putting a lot of (traffic) pressure on its international gateways, which at times exceeds the available limits in terms of capacity, consequently slowing the browsing amongst the masses.
Technology Review has published this article which reveals that computer scientists in Pakistan are building a system to boost download speeds in the developing world by letting people effectively share their bandwidth. The basic idea behind the research is develop a system that chops up popular pages and media files, allowing users to grab them from each other, building a grassroots Internet cache.
Here is the selected excerpt from article
In developed countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) create Web caches–machines that copy and store content locally - to boost their customers’ browsing speeds. When a user wants to view a popular website, the information can be pulled from the cache instead of from the computer hosting the website, which may be on the other side of the planet and busy with requests. Similar services are offered by content distribution companies such as Akamai, based in Cambridge, MA. High-traffic sites pay Akamai to host copies of their content in multiple locations, and users are automatically served up a copy of the site from the cache closest to them.
Umar Saif’s team at LUMS is developing DonateBandwidth, a system inspired by the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol that is popular for trading large music, film, and program files. With BitTorrent, people’s computers swap small pieces of a file during download, reducing the strain placed on the original source.
DonateBandwidth works in much the same way but lets people share more than just large files. When users try to access a website or download a file, a DonateBandwidth program running on their machine checks first with the peer-to-peer cache to see if the data is stored there. If so, it starts downloading chunks of the file from peers running the same software, while also getting parts of the file through the usual Internet connection. The software could allow people in countries that have better Internet connections to donate their bandwidth to users in the developing world.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 16, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Cellular companies of Pakistan are facing some tough time inside, as reported by an inside official of a cellular company. They are apparently facing bunch of problems in parallel. These problems are making Think Tanks to decisively operate their minds and bring the lost glory of mobile phone companies.
Mobilink is worst hit of current situation, as opinioned by an telecom analyst that I spoke with. He was actually backed by some facts and the ground realities to support his voice. He said that Mobilink is planning to reshape their policies and strategies to tackle the situation created. That is maybe the reason that Mobilink has gone in passive mode in terms of announcing new Value Added Services and/or any packages (that they used to do every other week). It merits mentioning that latest major activity from Mobilink was back in June’s first week. (however, they launched couple of CSR campagns that included launch of Zeb and Hanya’s album and a Movie that they sponsored). Mobilink is specifically running corporate advertisements on TV channels to keep itself alive, otherwise there is nothing new from them for last couple of months.
Same is the case with Ufone, besides couple of new Value Added Services; they are advertising Uwon for last 6 weeks now. Warid and Telenor are also the effectives. I was eagerly waiting for August 14th, 2008 where I was expecting any special offer from cellular companies or the PTCL regarding our Independence Day, but the day ended with nothing much than just a deceiving package from Warid and the patriotic advertisements.
This quietness by cellular companies can be termed as the bread limit of their tariff plans that they have reached. But the decrement in Sales is still a question mark (given that we have not reached the saturation level in terms of cellular subscribers)
There can be possibly at least 3 major reasons that have pulled down the growth and to some extent the revenues’ graph for cellular companies substantially.
1 – Severe Regulatory Campaign: We have seen Pakistan Telecommunication very active in recent months, after the pressure was exerted from Senate’s Standing Committee to cap sale of illegal SIMs. These actions by PTA (which includes warning to cellular companies, blocking of illegal SIMs, raid on Franchises and Retail Shops) have affected the sale and consequently the growth of companies’ subscribers.
2 – Increased Taxes on Telecom Services: Cellular companies are also not happy with the increment in taxes on Telecom services. Increases taxes have taken up the pricing by almost 6 percent, which has brought down the calling ratio by at least 8-9 percent. Increment in taxes on Mobile Phones has also hindered the way to healthy revenues for cellular companies
3 – Emergence of Zong: Introduction of a new cellular company always works a speed breaker for already operating companies. Zong, which actually did well with their launch acted as hand break on cellular companies’ speed. However, this impact may not last long, but when it was coupled with other two factors; Zong appeared as a negative effect on other cellular companies.
As discussed above, policy makers have joined their head, to think out what possible goodies they can do for their investors in order to hike their revenues and stock values. For the purpose, downsizing can be one of the options in their minds…!
These tightening revnues may cause telcos to use other illegal means of genrating revenues, such as using illegal voice termination (by the way Garmeen Phone of Telenor has done this in Bangladesh). Along with Upcoming 3G license auction is going to cause them spend more money to maintain their name in the market.
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