Pakistan Technology News

Business Recorder reports that Mobilink has launched its long awaited GPRS service. The initial release is limited to post-paid Indigo subscribers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The service requires a new subscription add-on costing Rs.500 per month (promotional offer according to their site). Included in the subscription is the ability to send unlimited ‘peer to peer’ MMS, unlimited browsing and full access to their newly launched WAP portal (flash demo of portal here).

Mobilink’s competitors Telenor and UFone have long provided metered GPRS services at Rs.15 per megabyte, though neither competitor offers a portal experience similar to Mobilink’s.

According to The News UAE based Etisalat and Singapore based Singtel are the top contenders for the upcoming PTCL privatization because of their deep pockets and already saturation of their home markets. Other contenders for 26% stake in PTCL are: Telekom Malysia (also a very strong contender with $1 billion in cash reserves), TurkCell, Saudi Oger, Saudi Telecom and China Telecom.

The tentative date for the sale is set to be end of June.

Warid is to launch operations in 28 cities today. They have a current initial capacity to support 1.5 million people.

Warid has signed agreements with five companies: Nokia (to supply cellphones), Huawei (optical transmission network), Chimera (after sales services), Frontier Works (local expertise and laying out of 5000km Optical Fibre cable) and Ericsson (GSM/GPRS + core radio and network equipment).

Frontier Works Organization is an army-run company (often charged with monopolizing government contracts) and proposed the clifton underpass in a record 4 months, but the proposal puts the company to shame (they should have hired some civil engineers).

More interestingly though, their GM Sales & Marketing is Naveed Saeed. This is his NAB profile:

Name: Naveed Saeed
Occupation: Inspector Punjab Police
Allegation: Corruption and corrupt practices through known sources of income.
Court Decision: The Court has finally accepted the application u/s 9 (c) of NAO 1999 and closed the case against Naveed Saeed.
NAB Name: Lahore
Ref Date: 1/19/2005
Ref No: 1/C/2005

What does an inspector know about marketing a multi-million dollar telecom company? I didn’t bother googling the rest of the team.

Telenor is responding by offering free in-network MMS and cross network SMS (reported to have some problems). We previously covered Mobile Number Portability which should set the stage for competition.

An interesting news item at Daily Times reports Pakistan has 10.54 million mobile phone users as of Apr 30, 2005. This is almost double the number of fixed telephone lines in the country and also explains the recent move by PTCL to offer free phone setup (previous story).

PTCL’s Executive VP, Mashkoor Hussain’s comments also explain the move by PTCL (which has a monopoly on fixed lines) to offer free connections:

“We have over 5 million subscribers in the country, We achieved this during the last 50 years but now we have a target to give two million more connections till December 2005.”

Other intersting market metrics from the article: the annual mobile phone market is growing at a staggering 120% anually. At present Mobilink leads the market share with 6.45 million subscribers, followed by Ufone with 2.2 million, Instaphone with 524,852 and Paktel with 308,629 subscribers. Norwegian company Telenor has attracted 653,170 customers in just two months.

PTCL’s ‘Bilkul Muft scheme’:

Under this scheme people would get new telephone connection by making a call at PTCL UAN number 111900900 if technically feasible the PTCL representative will visit the subscribers’ residence and after filing of new telephone connection form, the connection would be provided at subscriber’s residence.

Anyone called that number?

Additionally, they have also reduced the phone tariffs to Rs 3.50 per minute between any two cities in Pakistan. Last month they posted a profits of RS 21 billion. In parallel, PTCL plans to privatize 26% of their operations and is one of the heavy-weight tickers keeping the market bullish. Quite agressive.

Is the PTCL copper-wire infrastucture running through the city really worth that much? Maybe it’s the backbone that holds all this promise or maybe they are simply trying to set themselves up for high bids from foreign investors.

Pakistan will launch it’s own indigenous communications and surveillance satellite reports TheNews. This comes after Badr-1 Amateur Radio Satellite launched in 1990 which crashed and burned after 146 days, and Badr-2 launched in 2001 (2-3 year lifespan) for data imaging, charged battery experiment, data storage and forwarding, and radiation disometer (for measuring radiation). Like it’s predecessors, the new satellite will be manufactured indigenously. Pakistan Science and Engineering Foundation (Paksef) has an overview of the first two satellites. AARL has a fascinating history of the satellites. In 2002, Pakistan acquired Hughes Global Systems Satellite (HGS3) from the US for a 5 year lease at US$4.5m and dubbed it Paksat-1, Pakistan’s first commercial satellite. Paksat-1 was launched on Dec 29, to meet the Apr 2003 launch window opportunity. It had 30 C-band and 10 Ku band transponders resulting in more bandwidth (tv channels and faster/cheaper internet). Paksat-1 passed through the recommendation of President Pervez Musharraf as did the newly proposed indigenous satellite estimated to complete by 2008. The website for Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission in Pakistan (SUPARCO) is lacking on any information. Details on the telecommunications and surveillance capabilities of the new satellite would be welcome.

Dawn reports that Pakistan Telecom is working toward Mobile Number Portability. All major countries have already adopted this to prevent carriers from locking in users. From the article: “The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is working to launch mobile number portability (MNP) from November, enabling a subscriber of a cellular company to change his network operator without changing the number”. The competition is about to get stiffer. It seems to me like this is to help Telenor and Warid ease into the mobile market. Bad news for the current mobile phone carrier, great news for us.