State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan has moved to a new address: TelecomPk.net
Please visit the new site to read these stories:
In this story I’ll review and compare the emerging telecom markets of China, India and Pakistan. Combined together these 3 neighboring countries present one of the fastest growing region for the telecom industry, making them especially attractive for investors and companies.
Read the rest of the story here.
Another post in the Disaster management technologies series. Japanese mobile telephone users may soon be warned of an earthquake in their area just before it strikes. Japan’s two biggest operators, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have announced that they are jointly developing a system to notify customers of an imminent earthquake. Now the first question I have is: What good will it do? What will YOU do if you find out that a big earthquake is coming in 5 seconds?
And the second question is: How will this work? Read it here.
Interesting study about the telecommunication trends in Asia reveals that there’s still a lot of unmet demand in the low-income population. Read the rest of the story here.
Continuing the discussion on VOIP in developing countries and in particular in Pakistan, this post looks at the issues with regulating VOIP and the Grey telephony market. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) defines Grey telephony as: the use of illegal gateway exchanges to bypass legal PTCL gateways and terminate/originate international traffic, including through VoIP gateways, GSM gateways, WLL phones, mobile SIMs or other related equipment. This traffic may then be distributed onwards using WLL and mobile numbers. It is claimed that gery telephony costs losses of over Rs. 3 billion annually.
More of the post is here.
I came across an interesting paper at the ITU site titled “The Future of Voice” - you can also get the paper here at State of Telecom in Pakistan. This paper is a good guide to VOIP technologies and how different countries are dealing with it. It also talks about the future growth of voice markets and the technology trends which accompany it. In my next post I’ll write about the mention of Pakistan’s case in this paper.
At a related ITU workshop on this topic on Rauno Granath, Nokia’s Director of New Growth Markets and Networks, predicted that the worldwide number of subscribers to mobile telephony will reach 4 billion by 2010, and about 80 per cent the growth will come from lower income, emerging markets.
How will the Evolution of business models evolve to reach low-income consumers? This huge rowth in worldwide mobile subscribers means new business models must be created to meet the needs of low-income subscribers in emerging markets. The illustration below is an interesting way to look at it.
Source: “Voice services in new growth markets,” presentation by Rauno Granath, Nokia.
The paper also has a good number of illustrations, tables and data.
Korea is at the forefront of mobile technology adoption and the industry pays special attention to the trends there. One example: Korean mobile carrier SK telecom is introducing google search (with advertisements) on its wireless web portal. I came across a multi-part series of interesting posts written by Kim Min-seok about future trends of mobile technologies and markets at Korea Herald, here and here. In this post I’ll present some excerpts from the sixth and seventh articles which analyze the “broad changes that Web 2.0 is bringing about in the business world.” I’d recommend reading the full articles but for those in a hurry, here are the key thoughts:
1.Mobile phone makers would like to integrate content into their own platforms instead of allowing others to control content.
2. Customers will select a service provider that has a platform which is convenient to use and enables access to diverse content and channels.
3. Hyper-customization will decide the winner.
Here are excerpts from the article (emphasis is mine):
The current consensus is that mobile terminal makers stand to gain the most from the fact that customers must first connect their devices when using content and services.
Up to now, the core elements of success of the mobile phone have been the hardware characteristics of the equipment itself, such as price, function, quality and outside design. But in Mobile 2.0, it is a means of accessing the mobile Web, not just a means of talking by telephone. This implies that design of the mobile platform embedded in the terminal is going to be important - it must enable user interfaces, UCC production and full browsing.
Due to the sharing of open operating systems and equipment middleware platforms in order to reduce costs, the possibility of functional differentiation will decrease in terms of quality and general functions. Therefore, if convenience is maximized by innovating the small screen and input device, which are regarded as the maximum constraints, terminal makers will exert a tremendous influence on the mobile service market.
Mobile phone makers, led by global No. 1 player Nokia, are trying to integrate content into their own platforms. Their strategy is to move into the content portion of the mobile value chain with convergence of digital equipment. Nokia is utilizing its powerful brand and domination to become a mobile media platform operator that provides related media content including advertisements, images and games.
In order to strengthen the competitiveness of its platform, Nokia has introduced mobile advertising platforms such as Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector, and developed a game platform, N-Gage.
Apple offered a service that can be used in linkage with iPhone after purchasing all the content such as TV programs and movies from iTunes using Mac. That is, media content including music, broadcasting and movies and terminal lines such as mobile phone, PC and TV are provided simultaneously. This allows us to get a glimpse into Apple’s strategy that customers can enjoy everything within the platform called Apple by providing them with total service ranging from software to hardware.
In the Mobile 2.0 age, the platform that gives value to the customer when he purchases a terminal will become one of the core purchase elements. In Korea and Japan, mobile operators such as LG Telecom and DoCoMo are considered one purchase category, and terminal makers such as LG Electronics and Sony Ericsson as another purchase category. In Europe, where the GSM system is used, terminals and mobile operators are also different purchase categories.
But in the future when terminal makers, internet portals and mobile operators all provide mobile services, the criteria for purchase will become different. The platform will become an important element, overtaking the design of the terminal or the charging system of the mobile operator. Mobile platform services offered by internet portals such as Google and Yahoo! will also compete with mobile operators and terminal makers.
Customers will select a service provider that has a platform which is convenient to use and enables access to diverse content. So they will evaluate the platforms of mobile operators, terminal makers and internet portals before they choose one they like. This is because the “prosumer” (producer-like consumer) can use open sources to create new services by combining the existing technologies. The most convenient platform, and one with the most differentiation, will therefore be the most popular.
If you enjoy reading local technology blogs like this one (or this, or this, or this, or this, or this) and enjoy contributing information and commentary on the same, we are building up a mailing group and we are calling it Pakistan Telecom Grid. The group membership is open to all and other blog authors (like TM, Mustafa and Sajjad and anyone else who care to join) will be upgraded as managers so that we’ve a collective stewardship of the collection.
About the group: An informal grid of Telecommunication and Network Services professionals and insiders of Pakistan. Inspired from the fact that the collective authors and respective audience of the relatively few technology blogs that relate to Pakistan can be team up as a virtual pool of guys with an interested in communications technologies. This assembly can be used to enhance social interaction between the members, get-together events, private discussions, rumor sharing and rumor milling etc.
Join in now.
Thanks to TM for the idea and the writeup for this post.
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