Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 7, 2008 at 4:14 AM
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has announced that they have reached at point where they are ready to issue Broadband Wireless Access licenses in the country. Initial draft that has guidelines for the upcoming bidding and for WiMAX license details says that two nation wide licenses will be given away in 2.3Ghz band and one in the 2.5Ghz band.
Operators already operating in the country are banned from bidding - and the bidders are limited to having 60% foreign shareholding. Furthermore, the draft says that licensees will be allowed to rollout and operate network to provide nationwide Broadband Wiress services based on IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX) standards. The system can be point-to-multipoint or mesh radio systems consisting of BWA distribution hub stations and their associated subscriber stations (or BWA access devices). The last mile solution may be done in conjunction with WiFi, but that wholly depend on operators.
The good thing, which may be reconsidered after input from operators, is that it is said mandatory for all operators to share the same tower and existing infrastructure if available.
Dhabi Group and Orascom may seek its opportunities in Bangladesh’s emerging broadband market. Along with, we may see rise in equipment orders for Motorola and Huawei.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 2, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Chinese Company Huawei says that it has been selected by Mobilink, Pakistan’s largest GSM operator, to deploy a commercial WiMAX 16e network. Huawei will cover central Pakistan and hot spots in the country’s six major cities, including Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi.
Under the terms of the contract, Huawei will provide Mobilink with a complete WiMAX solution including distributed base stations, an access service network-Gateway and a network management system.
No financial or rollout details were provided.
It merits Mentioning here that Mobilink is already in contract with Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent for its WiMAX network in Pakistan
[Via Cellular News]
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 2, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Mobilink, second WiMAX service provider of Pakistan, has finally hit the WiMAX surface by introducing its services in Karachi in its first phase of countrywide rollout plan.
Uzair Ahmed broke the story on TGP backed with two official documents that reveal Mobilink’s WiMAX services, pricing and few other details. Named as Mobilink Infinity, WiMAX services would be offered in Karachi only, as a soft launch, until they are successfully tested and taken to other regions of Pakistan as well.
Their official webpage is not displaying anything yet. Also the news is missing in main stream electronic and print media. But there are couple of evidenced on fellow blogs, that confirm the existence of Mobilink Infinity.
Let’s look into tariff details before going into further details…!
- Free Installation is for customers subscribing before September 30, 2008
- Unlimited Internet Access
- Free calls to All Mobilink Infinity and Mobilink GSM Users (for limited Time)
Well prices look stunning, they are far better than any other broadband service provider in Pakistan. Mobilink Infinity has broken the PKR 2,000 barrier for 1 Mbps link (unmetered) that was being offered by LinkDotNet, PTCL and other ISPs, and taken it down to just PKR 1,199; not only this, the package comes with VoIP privileges, and that too with Free calls from WiMax (Infinity) to WiMax (Infinity) and on any Mobilink GSM Subscribers (Defiantly a limited time offer), but this a treat.
But hold on, there is a bad news! With Mobilink Infinity you will have to pay almost PKR 16,000 for installation equipment (CPE) and security. However, for promotional period, this first time payment is lessened to PKR 8,000. Home users may not like to pay this huge amount. Other wise things seemed so well.
Considering the 1 Mpbs pricing, they could have taken 512 Kbps package down to PKR 500 to meet most in-expensive internet available in the world. But PKR 999 is not bad too!
Apart from pricing, services, response time, customer support, reliability and network uptime are other features that would come under consideration in the long run. We know that WiMAX is an evolving technology; hence, like any voice/data network, we should expect issues earlier on, but once streamlined, Mobilink Infinity is going to give tough time to not only Wateen but other broadband service providers too.
Wateen Telecom must be eying the situation very closely, and may revise their packages immediately. Currently they are offering capped packaged with limited download/upload capacity.
I see lot of potential in WiMAX market in Pakistan, specifically when we see than Wateen has acquired 25,000 customers in a short span of time, we will have to see in coming months, what Mobilink Infinity is going to do, which is apparently lot better than of Wateen in terms of monthly rental and coverage.
Mobilink will have to invest some money by subsidizing the WiMAX equipment (which is going to cost a user PKR 16,000), if they really want to get some good subscriber base.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on June 25, 2008 at 7:40 AM
Communications market research firm Infonetics Research has said in one of its recent reports that the worldwide WiMAX equipment market, including fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment, increased 59% sequentially to $363 million in 1Q08.
Infonetics’ report has mentioned that Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) equipment saw a significant hike in sales which jumped 141 percent in first quarter 2008, while overtaking the revenues from Fixed WiMAX (802.16d) equipment for the first time.
This increment in Mobile WiMAX equipment sale was result of number of new network rollouts, while existing networks continued to scale up during first quarter of the current year.
“We expect healthy growth for the evolving mobile WiMAX market, which is seeing strong adoption not only from Tier 2 and 3 carriers, but from Tier 1 nationwide operators as well, like Sprint-Clearwire in the US, SK Telecom and KT in South Korea, Wateen in Pakistan, BSNL in India, and Vodafone and Orange in new territories,” said Richard Webb, wireless analyst for Infonetics Research.
Other highlights from the report:
- Motorola takes the lead in overall WiMAX revenues in 2008 after increasing its worldwide mobile revenue share by 10 points, and is the first vendor to exceed $50 million in mobile WiMAX revenue in a single quarter, according to Infonetics’ estimates
- Alvarion continues to lead in worldwide fixed WiMAX equipment revenue share, but is getting a run for its money by Telsima, which increased its revenue in 1Q08
- The nascent mobile WiMAX phone and Ultra Mobile PC segments showed early traction, together increasing 171% sequentially in 1Q08; these devices have appealing, non-traditional form factors and capabilities and will play a major role in attracting new subscribers to mobile WiMAX networks
- The number of fixed and mobile WiMAX subscribers topped 2 million worldwide in 2007 and is expected to triple by the end of 2008
[Via Cellular News]
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on June 24, 2008 at 12:42 PM
After Wateen getting mixed response from market, Mobilink is set ready for the soft launch of its WiMAX operations in the country. WiredPakistan has reported in an un-official discussion that Mobilink is going to start offering WiMAX services in Karachi in coming few days.
Through a friend, the poster learnt that Mobilink is all ready to start offering the beta services for test purpose, mainly to corporate clients, however, few of home users may also enjoy cutting edge WiMAX technology jointly deployed by Alcatel-Lucent and Mototola. This off the record conversation revealed that we should not expect much from Mobilink’s WiMAX, as the investor (Orascom, the parent company of Mobilink) does not see returns on investments (ROI) in Pakistani markets, hence not very generously investing in the country. The poster claims that his resource has confirmed quality and blanket coverage of Mobilink WiMAX in cities like Karachi, compared to poor coverage by Wateen. (I personally back this, as there are many locations, including Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore etc. where you don’t get WiMAX signals)
However, there was another poster who claimed that Mobilink had already launched its test services for their employees in Islamabad. We don’t know how long this test transmission will run, but Mobilink may get advantage of proven technology of Alcatel-Lucent. Based on the latest IEEE 802.16e-2005 standards (also called Rev-e), the Mobilink’s WiMAX network is deployed in the 3.5GHz spectrum.
Obviously, we know nothing about pricing details, but one can expect that Mobilink is going to give extremely tough time to Wateen, just like they did with LinkDotNet.
Any additional information/correction is welcomed in comments
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on June 19, 2008 at 9:38 PM
We have seen much boom in internet broadband market in Pakistan; situation is much better than the recent years. Now we can have 1 MB link in less than Rs. 2,000 which was as high as Rs. 60,000 just couple of years ago; thanks to LinkDotNet and PTCL.
However, we are still required to compete hard when it comes to the customer services and number of broadband customers in the country, which are merely one hundred and thirty thousands. And I believe, customer services become vital to increase the strength. We have got huge number of heads in our country, now exceeding 160 million mark, so if service is offered in good manners, no doubt that inhabitants will love to acquire it.
When compared with India, situation is quite satisfactory as we are not lacking far behind. Broadband in India is still capped with download limit contrary to a free hand given to customers here in Pakistan. This particular package named as BSNL 500 Combo offers 215 Kbps speed in 500 Indian Rupees, however, you have liberty of un-metered download only at night; in addition BSNL also offer no line rent and 175 free local calls with the bundle.
Pakistan Government should now look forward at strategies to offer free internet to some selected segment. Obviously it would be nothing less than day dreaming if we think of free internet for everyone, but school and universities should get this free internet treat at least. We know that Bangladesh has offered free broadband internet for more than 40,000 state-run primary schools. Not only this, you can get broadband internet in Bangladesh at 25 percent of rack rates if you are a school, even the private one.
India also announced last year they are going to offer free 2 MB internet broadband link to every citizen by year 2009. Okay, don’t do that “Free for All” in Pakistan, but we may start with our schools, universities, libraries etc….to at-least kick things going.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on June 17, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Pakistan’s broadband market has been slothful despite the fact that broadband services have been made available since five years. Currently there are a total of approx 131,871 Broadband subscribers, which provide dismal picture when compared with other similar economies.
Cost of service (Tariff) has been the major reason behind this slow growth. However a major development for broadband market is the introduction of DSL services by the incumbent (PTCL) itself. PTCL has started offering its DSL services since June 2007 in various cities e.g Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi. PTCL offered low tariffs for home users with free installation service. This has affected tariffs offered by other DSL operators as they have also lowered DSL tariffs in order to remain competitive. According to PTCL sources, since they started of DSL service, 35,000 subscribers have subscribed to their Broadband. It is believed that such competition will lower the tariff and eventually will flourish the broadband market.
Coverage / Provision of broadband services is another factor as main emphasis of broadband operators have been to cover urban areas specially large cities, leaving a major part of population leaving in small cities, towns and villages forbidden of broadband services.
One can expect that PTCL having the largest data network will soon start offering DSL services in other cities and towns. WiMax Services will play a vital role in proliferation for broadband services to rural areas of the country in near future as the figure show that since introduction of first ever WiMax service
(December 2007) in Pakistan Wateen Telecom has captured 10000 subscribers in a short span of four months.
Apart from above Literacy Rate, Computer Penetration, Broadband Investment, QoS Level, Policy execution including the issues such as (Local Content Development, Countrywide Broadband Awareness Campaign and Provision of low Interest Loans for purchase of Computers) has also affect the development of broadband in the country, however It is expected that steps taken by PTA in collaboration with Industry players will ensure better and economical broadband services in Pakistan. Latest developments like reduction in tariff, steady rise in disposable income per capita, extensive infrastructure rollouts (especially fiber), introduction of triple-play services, rural tele-center project to educate rural population, Deployment of Fiber and WiMax Networks and growing bandwidth demands from businesses will help Broadband proliferation in urban as well as rural areas. It is estimated that there will be 0.5 Million Broadband subscribers in Pakistan by 2010.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on May 17, 2008 at 6:59 AM
One of our fellows, M. Junaid Khan, recently discovered a job’s ad from Wi-Tribe in some newspaper.
Obviously, there is nothing exciting in that, however, the clue he got was of some importance for internet users in Pakistan.
Junaid Khan, predicts that Wi-Tribe is going to launch their WiMAX services very soon in Pakistan. It merits mentioning here that Wi-Tribe is jointly owned by Qatar Telecom, ATTCO group and Clearwire, and they are already operating WiMAX in Jordan. 
Wi-Tribe is one of fourteen LDI license holders in Pakistan, and they had been in a dispute with Telecard, reported here.
LinkDotNet is also intending to launch its WiMAX services in Pakistan, while they are in an agreement with Alcatel-Lucent for WiMAX deployment.
So there are some sign of competition for Wateen Telecom in coming days. Wateen say they have managed to grab 15,000 customers till now, and they hold 9 percent share in broadband market. Un-confirmed sources have reported that Wateen may start its DSL operations as well, to compete and survive in the tightening low priced market.
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