Time for PTA to Lock Cellular Tariffs

Posted: 29 Nov 2011 06:55 PM PST

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has been long looked for to take necessary measures to cap the price war amongst the cellular operators in Pakistan, to make sure that these lowering tariffs don't hamper the industry at large.
Price war, usually believed to benefit end users, has in reality caused a customer more damage than bringing him any relief. A Pakistani cellular user with lowest call rates in the world has to compromise over quality, inferior customer support, additional charges (every other month now) and lack the innovation that mobile operators could bring into their products.
On operator's end these pricing strategies could not cost them more than their dropping ARPUs. Customers are increasing, and so are average minutes per user per month, but revenues are standing still at what they were a year ago, or two for some operators. Situation gets worse when stagnant revenues are coupled with since ever devaluating Pakistan rupee.
Its not that regulators in other countries haven't controlled the pricing of cellular segment, in fact we have recent examples of Uganda and Vietnam where government had to come in the way of promotion to ask mobile companies to not to decrease the price of telecom services beyond a certain point.
In case of Pakistan, PTA relies on SMP (Significant Market Player) rules to make sure that prices don't drop enough, but we seldom see any action against Mobilink or PTCL (SMPs in their respective segments) when they introduce packages often dubbed as killer offers.
Call it sluggishness or a deliberate act by PTA to merely increase customers' count, the whole situation has resulted into deteriorating stock values of cellular companies. This is why cellular companies are today reluctant to further invest in the market, be it for network expansion or the 3G, fact is that no one wants to invest a single penny before they get their original investments back in shape of revenues.
Remember the time when new value added services used to surface every other week, its not the case now. But new offers keep hitting the bill boards, probably because that's the only way left to fetch new customers.
Industry experts have started to speak out that the time has come for PTA to sit with mobile operators, consult with them, to work on options, discuss them with industry veterans to devise a way to strengthen the industry.
Expect more damage in shape of new charges in coming days, if this doesn't happen.
On a relevant note, if PTA must favor the customer, they can do so by pressing the government hard to reduce taxes. It may be recalled that telecom sector is most taxed amongst all in the country.

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To read more, click: Time for PTA to Lock Cellular Tariffs
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Mobilink Announces ArtPad Winner

Posted: 29 Nov 2011 06:54 PM PST

Mobilink has concluded the first Artpad competition, with Muhammad Osama of Karachi winning this first-of-its-kind digital media initiative, which challenged the artistic skills and creativity of Pakistan's online community.

The Mobilink Artpad was a unique initiative by Mobilink to promote art and creativity within the online community. The initiative garnered a lot of attention with participation By a wide array of online users across Pakistan.

A large number of unique entries were submitted by users over a two week period, all vying for the top prize of an Evo 3D phone sponsored by HTC. Entries ranged from pencil sketches to digital art, all based along the theme of 'Reshaping Lives', encouraging Pakistan's online community to unleash their creativity with a mix of concern on how to change people's lives for good.

As part of Mobilink's initiative to ensure transparency in the competition process, all entries were judged by Mobilink brand ambassador and renowned singing sensation Ali Zafar, based on the depiction of the theme, creativity and artistic effect.

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Copyright © 2010 ProPakistani.PK
To read more, click: Mobilink Announces ArtPad Winner
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Network Engineering as a Career in Pakistan

Posted: 29 Nov 2011 06:45 PM PST

Network Engineering is honestly not only a Desktop Support job – this domain is extremely vast and offers very rewarding and challenging careers, I will try to cover most important aspects, skill set needed to be on the Network Engineering track and differentiating factors – considering the fact there are more than 2,000 plus students pass-out locally every year with Computer Engineering degree.
Two very prominent domains of Industry students can choose if they would want to be part of Network Engineering profession. One is Vendor Partner(s) or Solution Providers industry and the second is Internet/Data Service Provider(s) industry.
I will briefly try to describe the difference between these two industries and the skill set required to be the most ideal candidate for the employers from these and the strategy one can adopt to hunt the opportunity in the most suitable domain.
Vendor Partner(s) or Solution providers have two sub-categories, i.e. pre-sales and the post-sales.
Pre-sales as from name it gives an idea – works before the sale is made, people associated with this domain designs and suggest the 'Network' and the equipment to be deployed, meaning understanding the Customer Requirements (this needs good communication skills), translating them into the real Network Design (this needs good understanding of Network protocols, devices used from multiple vendors e.g. Cisco/Juniper/Huawei etc and their possible behavior after being implemented)
Post-sales meaning after the sales have been made the deployment phase comes in, now to understand this consider a design of network has been made now it has to be implemented.
Skill set requiring very good hands-on experience of deploying inter-networks, good knowledge of command-line of different vendor products e.g. Cisco/Juniper etc – knowing at least two is good. Any one willing to practice over these products can look for GNS3/Packet tracer/IOU(was for Cisco employees but now available) for Cisco and Olive for Juniper – all these are emulators and are available very easily on Internet for study purpose.
Now for Internet/Data Service Provider(s) they are sub-divided in two domains as well, i.e. Access Networks and Core Networks.
Access Networks covers the SP last mile (where client is terminated) and client end. Expertise needed covers the clear understanding of Networking protocols, Physical medium and Vendor(s) product knowledge (i.e. Physical Layer(different mediums FTTx,Copper etc), Data Link, some part of Network layer).
RF expertise are needed as well, also Access Networks team provides the 1^st level support to the Customers and provides network design and implementation.
Core Networks covers almost all from the above mentioned domains, plus needing the expertise of Systems Engineering (Unix/Linux and some part of Windows Server Base) and providing 2^nd level Customer Support also advising the possible network designs for prospective customers.
SP networks are Converged Networks – meaning they cover almost all aspects of Inter-networks ranging from VoIP (e.g. Asterisk Server), Core Networks (Deep network protocols knowledge and their implementation skills/hands-on), multi-vendor environment (have multi-vendor inter-networks e.g. Cisco/Juniper/Huawei etc) product knowledge, Automation (requiring the understanding of software languages, mostly the software languages that are used are Bash/shell, perl and python) for optimizing the converged networks to be pro-active and preemptive.
In SP most of the products used are Open-source so having the expertise over Unix/Linux is an added advantage – all knowledge requiring to have basic understanding of Open-source products are available over Internet, few most commonly used tools are MRTG/Cacti for monitoring, Squid (Cache Server), qmail/postfix and sendmail (MTA's) etc.
Once you identify what you want to do, start looking for working options in that domain before graduating, if you are interested in Solution Providers – search them and contact them for internship (e.g. google Cisco Partner locater tool), they are always looking for interns to work on on-going projects and for Internet/Data Service Providers start from smaller Internet Service Providers and try approaching them for internship.
Every domain has its own significance, but all boils down to the interest – whatever interests you is the best path as you won't have to work too hard to excel in that domain.
Writer is a Core Networks Engineer, involved in Service Provider as the ‘Systems Integrator’ and an activist for Internet freedom.

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To read more, click: Network Engineering as a Career in Pakistan
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