Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 27, 2008 at 3:34 AM
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has reported a slack growth of cellular subscribers being added by mobile companies for the month of August 2008. PTA’s latest statistics show that cellular companies were able to add only 0.2 million connections in last month.
On the whole, all companies collectively added net 238,364 subscribers, taking total subscribers in country to reach 89.5 million mark. In the said month, companies showed merely 0.3 percent growth in adding subscribers.
Graph shown below is basically the depiction of telecom industry, which is going through tough time due to number of reasons including hiked inflation, political and economical instability in the country, increased taxes on telecom services and to some extent the policies.
This graph, which is derived from PTA’s statistics show that Zong stood first in August 2008 by attaining 357034 customers. While on the other hands, Mobilink lost 478095 subscribers (I don’t know how it happened, maybe due to millions of unregistered SIMs that got blocked)
It can be said that cellular companies have reached the active chunk of Pakistani market that slightly slowed down their penetration in the big cities. The only idea left unexplored is the rural market, for which I am sure mobile companies have already derived their strategies to expand their services and hit rural community more aggressively.
Overall, as of now, Mobilink is leading with 31.5 million subscribers, followed by Ufone with 18.60 million subscribers after taking back second slot from Telenor, which is now at third position with 18.31 million users.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 25, 2008 at 6:01 PM
Senate’s standing committee on Interior has passed directives to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and Ministry of IT and Telecom to finalize policy for taking away pre-active SIMs from the market, with-in two weeks.
A source familiar with the directives issued by Senate’s standing committee told that Government is very serious to tackle illegal SIM’s issue, especially after Marriott’s incident; Government is in no mood to leave any stone un-turned in order to make the country free of illegal SIMs.
Seriousness of Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Interior Talha Mehmood can be judged by his statement that he gave during today’s meeting, he said, “We are in state of War…” He said that PTA must come up with policy with in two weeks, so that all pre-active SIMs could be taken away from market at earliest. Senator Talha, linked various criminal activities with illegal SIMs, and he once again emphasized the need to taking severe actions against those who carry illegal SIMs.
Further reading on Illegal SIMs …
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 22, 2008 at 6:35 PM
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has blocked access to several blasphemous web content/movies from Pakistan. In this regards, PTA has directed all Internet Service Providers of Pakistan to block the content of these websites. ISPs say that these websites would remain blocked till the further orders from PTA.
One of the blocked sites is hosted on Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web blogs hosted on the site. The Pakistan bloggers found their blogs blocked, even though their blogs are not connected with these blasphemous activities.
Bloggers in Pakistan can edit, and update their blog entries, but they can not view or read them.
We have been awaiting response from PTA on this. While This below screen shot clearly says ISPs’ version…
Update: Blogspot is accessible now after only 2 hours it got blocked…
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 22, 2008 at 12:29 PM
PTA has been, somewhat, consistently publishing quarterly and annual industry reports for few years now. These industry reports are packed with industry indicators, industry direction, updates and other major elements of Telecom sector of Pakistan.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has failed to publish its quarterly reports lately. Its last report was for Q1 2008, and in past too we have seen PTA missing its quarterly and even annual reports.
When contacted PTA officials, in this regard, in a response to a question that what is actually hindering the authority to publish its quarterly industry report? He said that “PTA publishes 3 quarterly reports while 4th and last one is merged with the annual report. Annual report for the current year will be published shortly.” It merits mentioning here that we have already spent Q3 2008, but there came neither the quarterly report for Q2 nor the annual report.
A PTA source, who requested anonymity, has told us that PTCL was actually the main hindrance for the publication of quarterly report for Q2 2008. He maintained that PTCL had not been giving its data to authority, despite repetitive notices.
However, we have learned that PTCL has now forwarded its statistics for Q2 2008 to PTA and authority has been compelling its report, which is likely to appear soon after Eid.
PTA’s previous annual reports and quarterly reports are available on its website.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 19, 2008 at 7:56 AM
Cabinet Division has floated an advertisement, inviting applications for vacant Member Technical slot. It merits mentioning here that Member Technical is second senior most position in PTA’s hierarchy along with Member Finance, after Chairman of PTA.
This position hold significant importance as one out of two members (Technical or Finance) is normally promoted to the seat of Chairman PTA.
Member Technical slot was freed by Dr. Muhammad Yaseen, after he was promoted to Chairmanship of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 18, 2008 at 7:38 AM
There was a news in print media yesterday, that Police has been allowed to directly access cellular user’s information; this includes our incoming and outgoing call details and information regarding SMS that we send and receive. I am not sure if Police can also access the content of calls (voice tapes), as it was not explicitly mentioned in any of news report.
If we consider crime rate, then this decision is going to help Police Department in ultimately reaching the culprits in quick time and with better accuracy, hence better results. Use of cell phone is a must do thing that criminals follow, meaning that they leave a very sound proof behind for police to catch them in minimum time.
But on other hands, as we know more and more government departments are now allowed to access cellular data directly, our very personal information is at risk. I don’t want to point out any single department, but I tend to decide or feel that my cellular record could be more secure and in safe hands if it was allowed to access through one point or one department.
I do not fear that these government institutes will access my information; instead my main concern is that now more individuals from our society (who have close references –friends/family - in these government departments) may also access my private data very easily.
I want to conclude here that there should be very strict and breach-less system to ensure that our cell phone records are safe and inaccessible to any un-authorized personal. Also want to add that its universal law that there should be lesser number of direct accesses to anything to make it more secure.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 12, 2008 at 10:51 AM
We have previously discussed the sluggishness in telecom sector of Pakistan. We had concluded that heavy tax impositions on telecom services and equipment including handsets are major factors for decreasing growth rate of cellular subscribers. Along with, we also saw that foreign direct investments that come in Pakistan from telecom sector saw a significant decrement.
Dr. Yasin, Chairman PTA has also derived that this increment in taxes is seriously damaging telecom sector, in terms of growth, revenues and FDI coming into the country. In an Iftar party that was organized by PTA specifically for journalists, he said that authority has asked the government to reconsider the imposition of added taxes on telecom services.
Chairman summarized achievements of telecom sector and said that Pakistan was able to fetch US $ 5 Billion of foreign direct investment into country in last 4 years. Lately Pakistan telecom has witnessed tremendous growth while adding 2.1 million cellar users per month in year 2007-08, added Dr. Yasin.
He also discussed the challenges that are being faced by the sector, which includes overall slow economic trend in the country and decreasing value of Pakistani Rupee.
Via [Daily Jang]
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on September 12, 2008 at 10:14 AM
In current telecom scenario of Pakistan, innocent subscribers are feeling tremendous pressure and harassment with growing fraudulent activities using cellular communication. It is of common practice that an SMS message that contains information about lucky draw award is received by innocent subscribers who unconsciously reply to such message and losses his balance in return. Besides that some obnoxious calls from a deceiver invites subscriber to come to particular location for award of prize money which ends up in loss of hard earned money of those innocent subscribers.
In the past Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has taken several measures to cap Spam, Unsolicited and Obnoxious Calls and text messages. Until now authority had tried to aware telecom subscribers to report such activities to PTA’s complain resolution number or helpline of respective cellular companies, in order to take action against such callers/spammers.
Lately, PTA has been trying to block unwanted calls on cellular phones in a more organized manner. For the purpose authority gave a tender advertisement in papers, asking solution providers for installation of SPAM filtering devices.
PTA website has revealed about a meeting that was attended by PTA officials and representatives of cellular service providers, in order to identify the critical issues relating to spam, unsolicited and obnoxious calls. In the meeting unsolved spamming problems were discussed that are increasing due to mobile generated fraudulent activities.
Currently Mobilink is offering a service that allows its subscribers to filter SMS (Text Messages), while Ufone is also offering Ufone call block service.
PTA thinks that this is not enough, and there should be an industry standard in order to block such unwanted calls and text messages. For the purpose, PTA also held a meeting with Tekelec (that provided SMS filtering services to Mobilink) to discuss possible solutions for the problem.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, after a deep look into the matter may direct all cellular companies to install such equipment that will filter all unwanted calls for cellular users.
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