Friday, January 01, 2010 NEW DELHI: India on Thursday announced to release 31 Pakistani fishermen, whose nationality has been confirmed by Pakistani authorities.
We thank for our readers for commenting – and keeping the discussion on the role. Here we have compiled a list of most commented stories on ProPakistani for year 2009.
A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest killed at least eight American civilians, most of them C.I.A. officers, at a remote base in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, according to NATO officials and former American intelligence officials.
Kosar Noreen weeps next to the body of her deceased husband, Mohammed Naveed, a victim of a car bomb attack in Lahore Wednesday.
ISLAMABAD: Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is a closed chapter and there is no point in dramatising Khan-related stories that are more fiction than fact, the Foreign Office said on Tuesday.
Pakistan Telecom industry did pretty smooth in year 2009, despite very severe working conditions due to ongoing global recession, hiked inflation, tough competition, law and order situation in the country and increased saturation rate for cellular subscribers.
Growth in subscriber saw a decline when compared to previous years, but that’s understandable. It merits mentioning here that millions of connections went offline during 2009 due to their un-registered or fake registrations status.
Overall Telenor, Warid and Zong did well in terms of adding new customers, showing positive gain in market share. Telenor added 3.4 million customers, while Warid could grab 2 million. Zong stood third in race with 1.47 million customers during November 2008 to November 2009.
Telenor is currently second in terms of Market share, while Mobilink still being at top. Ufone slipped down to forth position with Warid ahead of it at 3rd.
Price war amongst cellular companies remained the same; however the focus was found revolving the 30 second billing packages and SMS packages. Cellular companies started directly addressing each others in TVCs where we saw a clear tussle amongst the operators.
New SIM verification system, emergence of SIM ownership checking system and 668 service that tells number of SIMs registered against your CNIC are considered as major efforts by PTA to eliminate unregistered SIMs. However, fact remains there that PTA is yet to fully eliminate unregistered SIMs from the country.
Mobile commerce hit the surface, with Easy Paisa at the top of rank which offers local remittances through Easy Paisa outlet. Cellular companies also focused on utility bills payment offerings through franchises, service centers and designated outlets.
Taxes on telecom service were lessened by 1.5 percent in budget 2009-10. Moreover, taxes on handset import was also eliminated, however, SIM activation tax is still intact despite high demands of cellular companies.
3G didn’t appear in 2009 too, leaving infrastructure vendors in hard times. Lack of investment from cellular companies is further adding the Burdon on network vendors. Consequently, job situation at infrastructure vendors was seen not that secure.
Job situation in cellular companies is not firm too, as it was before. We saw limited layoffs too, however, still the Telecom sector is considered more secure in terms of jobs when compared to other areas.
Broadband industry successfully increased its growth, with emergence of new WiMAX operators (Qubee and WiTribe), we saw significant base increment in broadband industry. PTCL kept spreading its broadband coverage, while Wateen completed 100,000 customers’ mark. WiTribe is reportedly standing at 27,000 subscribers. Overall there are 550 hundred thousands broadband users in Pakistan, which are expected to cross 5 million mark in 3 years.
Tussle between PTCL and ISPs didn’t end this year too. Though we saw a level of understanding when a mechanism was defined to charge dial-up users per 20 minutes, but broadband operators kept shouting against PTCL for not co-operating with them in terms of new installation.
USF did a remarkable job in year 2009, it continued its ongoing projects and started new one in far flung areas of the country. It was USF that made it possible for customers to avail 1 MB DSL link for Rs. 300. Though ISPs had their reservations over the move and said these rates will kill the industry.
There are few important events, that we are linking below
You may add more in below comments to review the year 2009 for Telecom industry of Pakistan.
Copyright © 2009 ProPakistani.PK
Mobilink announces special prices for selected countries, which are as low as Rs. 1.36 per minute against a weekly subscription charge of Rs. 10 per country.
Meaning that if you subscribe for one country, then you can call Rs. 1.36 per minute to that specific country for one week.
Customers will have to subscribe to their desired destination once a week. One time Subscription Fee will be charged at the time of Subscription. Subscription Validity period will be 7 days. User can opt for maximum of 9 destinations at one time (separate fee per destination will be charged).
* For Canada and USA (L+M) the subscription charges have been doubled since 2 destinations get opened through the country code of 1.
How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe?
For subscription you have to type the name of the country and send an SMS to 424.Once the SMS is sent, a USSD string will be sent back to the you for further subscription for a particular country. you will dial the USSD string on mobile screen and press send to avail the discounted rate for that country.
E.g.
You type ‘UK’ and sends it to SMS short code 424. You will get a message like, Type *104*1*44*01# & press send to avail this offer for UK (Landline)
To Un-Subscribe from a particular country, you have to type the following USSD string and press send
* 104*4*<<xxxxx>>*<<yy>>#
where;
xxxxx: Complete country code (can be of any number of digits)
yy: Can be any of the values: (01:Landline 02:Mobile 03: Landline Mobile)
Note:
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited Network Operations Centre (NOC) has been awarded ‘Special International Recognition Award’ on displaying exemplary expertise acquisition for extensive utilisation/customisation of product features in an exceptionally short time span.
According to a message received here Wednesday the award was given on the occasion of 27th International Telecom Management Information Platform (TEMIP) User Group Conference held at Hamburg, Germany.
The award has been bestowed upon PTCL, among other 100 companies worldwide having HP NOC platform, for emerging as a source of inspiration for various incumbent and prospective HP customers by gaining maximum performance out of HP’s product portfolio.
Source: The News
Copyright © 2009 ProPakistani.PKPESHAWAR: Claiming responsibility for the suicide bombing on the main Ashura procession in Karachi, senior Taliban commander Asmatullah Shaheen on Wednesday warned of a fresh wave of attacks across the country in a week.
Women and children in Pakistan's IDP camps face an especially tough time due to winter weather and tough living conditions PESHAWAR, 29 December 2009 - Thousands of internally displaced persons from conflict-hit areas in the North West Frontier Province have been experiencing increased hardship as temperatures drop to freezing in many northern ...
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