Being a consumer-centric company Warid ensures to serve its valuable customers with delighting customer care, exceptional network quality and innovative products and services.

While commenting on the achievement Mr. Muneer Farooqui, CEO Warid Telecom said

“PTA has been very conducive and progressive since its inception. The mobile sector growth has been extraordinary and this sector has become a model for other countries across the world. Telecom Industry has largely benefited from the initiatives taken by PTA such as the deregulation of international gateways and mobile number portability which helped grow teledensity. I am very optimistic about Telecom industry of Pakistan and wish PTA and all the industry stakeholders a great success in future”.

With the end of 2010 Warid completes its five and half years of successful business operations in Pakistan. The company sets the highest standards of business excellence and secured over 17 million satisfied subscribers with a market share of about 17% and a network coverage in 6800 destinations, servicing 550 cities including Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas of Pakistan. With the substantial market share, a strong brand repute, loyal subscriber base and the recognition as the most trusted cellular service, Warid Telecom continues to set excellence benchmarks in the telecom Industry of Pakistan.

Officials said the telecom authority has submitted its nomination recently for the category of Outstanding Achievement Awards including Best GSMA Chairman’s Award and Government Leadership Award

PTA top-brass leadership seems confident to win the contest since it has won two titles recently PTA and its chief were awarded the titles of Best Most Progressive Telecom Regulator in South Asia for the year and Best Telecom Regulatory Leader of the Year by South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African (SAMENA) Telecommunication Council.

Telenor Pakistan with its product Easypaisa has entered the race of the Global Mobile Awards 2011 for the first time to record a landmark milestone achievement in its history.

The Norwegian cellular operator seems confident in contesting for two following categories-Social and Economic Development and Best Mobile Business and Enterprises. Telenor Pakistan has won Mobile Money Transfer Award in November 2010 for its mobile-banking services ‘Easypaisa’.

The Easypaisa services transacted Rs 10 billion in a single year with the total transaction carried recorded six million mark till October 2010. Starting with 2,200 outlets at the launch, service has been extended to more than 11,000 outlets in 700 urban and rural areas across Pakistan. The spread is even greater than the number of bank branches in Pakistan, which are more than 8,000.

(Source: DailyTimes)

He was speaking at a seminar organised by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in collaboration with Qualcomm and Central Asian Cellular Forum (CACF) at Islamabad on 3G mobile services. The theme was “Opportunities for All: Development of 3G Devices in Pakistan” says in a press release issued here on Tuesday.

Chairman PTA, Dr Mohammed Yaseen, moderated the ceremony. Delegates from Board of Investment, Pakistan Engineering Council, Ministry of IT, Representatives from Qualcomm, IT & telecom Industry experts, CEOs of telecom companies, International Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Local Investors, Mobile Distributors, Academia and media representatives attended the seminar. The Secretary said that the local manufacturing of 3G handsets is very important and govt would consider the recommendations given by the industry during the seminar.

On this occasion, Chairman PTA, Dr Mohammed Yaseen said that by the end of this quarter they would be able to roll out plans for 3G services once the policy is approved by the government. He said that handset manufacturing is a vital segment of mobile Eco System, by the end of 2011, there will be an estimated sales volume of 300 million 3G mobile handset around the globe. Pakistan offers an excellent opportunity for investment in 3G handset manufacturing with availability of skilled manpower and upward growth of mobile market. He said that creation of a favourable climate for high value added, low cost R&D, production and marketing will certainly instigate investment window in the country.

During the seminar the Chairman PTA also delivered a comprehensive presentation to highlight the world-wide practices regarding 3G manufacturing. He presented various investment incentives offered in various countries. The chairman also highlighted the present 3G handset market in Pakistan with necessary future roadmap to promote handset manufacturing industry in the country. Raheel Kamal, Sanjeet Pandit and Hani Yassin of Qualcomm also made presentations highlighting magnitude and importance of 3G Manufacturing in Pakistan.

The MoU would also boost mutual cooperation in the relevant fields and would enhance the industry academia linkage. The MoU would be valid for (five) 5 years and would be renewed on completion.

Main objectives of this collaboration are to support research activities and to equip future leadership with theoretical and practical training in policy and regulatory issues of telecom sector. It is expected that the related organisations would benefit from this collaboration, as young experts would be conducting research in the relevant fields of telecom with guidance of the faculty and PTA.

On this occasion, Chairman PTA Dr Mohammed Yaseen said that PTA would provide data on telecom sector and expertise to UET Taxila, reciprocally the University would encourage its students to undertake research in different areas of telecom sector. He said that under the MoU, PTA would help UET in identification of research areas.

Similarly, UET would cooperate with PTA on different issues of trade, business and economy related to telecom sector. The VC said “we are looking for possibility to set up a Chair on Telecommunications at UET.

“We have also plans to start masters and doctorate programmes in telecom regulations. We want to establish an institution for telecom research as well,” he added.

This is the third MoU signed between PTA and any university. Similar understanding exists with COMSATS and NUST. PTA has been working continuously towards encouragement of research activities in telecom sector. Being an academia friendly organization it has taken initiatives to establish strong linkages with educational institutions for the promotion of telecom research. Research on regulatory issues, challenges and transfer of new technologies in local sector is likely to help the regulator and the policy makers.

To this end PTA has taken significant steps that have received a positive response from all the stakeholders. These initiatives include PTA Gold Medal Scheme, Essay Competition on World Telecom Day and cash prizes for best research project competition and SMS-based Information System for educational institutions.

According to the initial draft, it would be mandatory for all cellular companies to submit QoS compliance report to authority.

It would be necessary for all cellular companies to meet minimum Quality of Service KPIs and benchmarks.

Key Indicators for QoS Standards:

• Network down-time for cellular companies should not exceed 1 percent mark, which is relatively high as compared to global standards.

• Grade of service or (the probability that the end customer can access the mobile services when requested while it is offered by display of the network indicator on the mobile Equipment), in any case should be 98 percent or higher.

• Call Connection Time: Should be less than or equal to 5 seconds

• Call Completion Ratio: Should be higher than 98 percent

• Voice Quality: Under PESQ Algorithm (ITU-T P .862) mean opinion score should be greater than 3.

• Accessibility of SMS Service: Greater than 99 percent

• SMS Delivery Time: Less than 8 seconds

Cellular companies would calculate their indicators and will have to report them to authority on monthly basis.

In response, authority will measure the quality of service through data submitted by the companies or surprise drive tests.

Regulation will be in place after industry’s consultation. Last date for submission of input on draft is set as January 7th, 2010.

(Source: ProPakistani)

PTA has submitted its nomination recently for the category of Outstanding Achievement Awards including Best GSMA Chairman’s Award and Government Leadership Award.

Quoting official sources, it reported that this will be 16th Annual Global Mobile Awards contest offering nine categories and 22 titles.

This event is going to be as part of the GSMA Mobile World Congress to be continued from February 14 to 17, the main international event to be organized to evolving business models adapt, new verticals and players emerge, cutting edge technologies, perceptions shift, and improve human lives. It will the must-attend annual gathering of the mobile industry in which 50,000 senior mobile leaders from 200 countries participated, aimed at enabling accelerating and directing new transformation towards Mobile Future.

PTA top-brass leadership seems confident to win the contest since it has won two titles recently Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and its Chief were awarded the titles of Best Most Progressive Telecom Regulator in South Asia for the year, and Best Telecom Regulatory Leader of the Year by South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African (SAMENA) Telecommunication Council.

It merits mentioning here that GSMA Awards 2011 uniquely offers organizations across the global mobile eco-system the opportunity to showcase the latest mobile products, services and initiatives to the world. The Awards are open to all eligible mobile companies and supporters of the mobile eco-system – GSMA Members, Associate Members and Non-members.

The presentation of the awards takes place during Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest and leading mobile industry event, held annually in Barcelona.

(Source: PakObserver)

A short code “1234” has been activated by all the cellular mobile operators and users can send SMS to “1234” by writing “Fund”.

Under the plan, Rs.10/- would be charged excluding taxes for contributing to “Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund 2010” for the flood affected people.

The amount collected by generating these SMSs would be deposited with the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund for which a special account has been opened with National Bank of Pakistan (Account No.898989).

The PTA has appealed to the public to send maximum number of SMSs to help the flood affected people in this hour of need.

NetSol Technologies ICT Excellence Award was held in connection to identify the most outstanding contribution towards ICTs. Dr. Mohammed Yaseen with his untiring efforts has made regulatory body a model organization in the Asia Pacific Region.

He has participated in the international fora and supported the cooperation in a variety of areas such as promotion of ICT market, telecom market liberalization, legal and regulatory framework for the telecom sector.

His major achievements during the past years included introduction of consumer protection structure for telecommunication subscribers, development of multiple international communication links, provision of free Internet dialup services to the masses, establishment of 350 tele-centers as a rural telephony project, giving a special emphasize on progress and development of broadband services in the country, introduction of a unified regulatory framework for mobile banking services, launching of new systems for effective resolution of Mobile SIMs issues, arrangement of local Internet peering point between International Bandwidth providers; transition of Pakistans ccTLD (pk) and initiatives to engage key industry players for enhancing local CT content market. President NetSol technologies applauded these significant milestones achieved by the Chairman PTA and appreciated his continuous efforts for ICT development in Pakistan.

According to the statement both entities would announce PTA-Ericsson Mobile Excellence Award by July 2010. The objective of this award is to honor students who have developed the most innovative user generated or professionally produced content and/or application in the areas of entertainment, social networking / online communities and location based services. PTA and Ericsson along with other stakeholders would also form an â??Expert Groupâ? on different areas related to telecommunication technologies and services.

Ericsson Speaker Program in partnership with PTA would try to facilitate knowledge sharing between telecom professionals and academia. Speakers from Ericsson and PTA with telecom industry background will create awareness of leading technologies and share experiences that can assist student community to keep pace with the emerging technologies. According to the statement, PTA would participate in Ericsson Graduate Program. Ericsson Graduate Trainee Program would be helpful in keeping the academia abreast of the technological developments and also in providing good start for new graduates to build a solid foundation for a bright future career. Ericsson and PTA would also organize an event on â??50 Billion Connected Devices by 2020â? in July, 2010. The event would converse about the adoption of 3G / 4G technologies in Pakistan.

Talking on this occasion Chairman PTA said that in reference to its endeavors for the development of ICTs in Pakistan, PTA has taken number of initiatives to launch and promote new innovative solutions for the betterment of telecom industry and society. We at PTA believe in harmonized efforts for the escalation of ICT industry in Pakistan as we look forward to carry out some significant projects in partnership with Ericsson Pakistan to bridge the gap between Industry, Academia and the Regulator.

Mr. Mohsen Tavakol said that Ericsson has been instrumental in shaping communications in Pakistan by introducing leading technologies and services since its inception. Ericsson new programs in collaboration with PTA are a testimony of their commitment to the people, society and business in Pakistan.

The News has learnt from reliable sources that the MoIT had also sought the opinion of the Law Ministry on the fee issue of the MVNO as the PTA had increased the recommended fee of $10,000 to $5 million without any justification.

An expert involved in the making of the MVNOs Framework of 2006 said that the MVNOs provide telephony and value added services to their clients from time purchased from cellular networks, as such, MVNOs do not need to own spectrum or infrastructure so there is no justification for demanding huge fee.

An official related to this development in MoIT on the condition of anonymity mentioned that the government did not want to be engaged in any litigation in this regard. The Chairman PTA, Dr Yasin responding to The News has said that the Authority did not want to repeat the mistake of WLL in which the service providers had run away with the public money.

“The PTA wants to introduce new licensing regime in case of MVNO,” he said adding that some big MVNO of the world had shown interest in Pakistani cellular business. “The PTA has been focusing on quality of service and under the existing MVNO Framework no one will be responsible for quality not the cellular operator nor MVNO operator,” Dr Yasin added.

The two largest mobile phone companies are strenuously opposing the idea to keep the license fee low thereby discouraging most companies from entering the market, industry sources said. The CEO of a Norwegian mobile phone operator in the country, in a recent interview, expressed his view that Pakistan’s telecom market would have to consolidate before the government can even consider a planned pushed into third generation technology.

MoITT in its letter earlier on April 04, 2007, in response to PTA’s consultative paper on review of MVNOs framework issued by the Authority vide circular No. 8-31/05/WLL&M/PTA dated March 20, 2006, had suggested $10,000 or equivalent to Pakistan rupees as 100 per cent license fee. However, recently PTA made a sudden shift in their approach and decided to fix $5 million license fee for MVNO.

PTA had come up with the policy mandate governing framework for operation of MVNOs services, through the afore-mentioned circular in 2006 also and Ministry had submitted its comprehensive response to the initial consultative paper in which they have suggested the same fee of $10,000.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Latif Khosa appreciated the PTA’s efforts for achieving remarkable progress in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. He said that the government was committed to enhance the quality of ICT sector.

“As we innovate in technologies and services on the Internet, Mobile and other segments of Telecommunication in our attempt to strengthen their outreach and accommodate the needs of the new user segments, it is vital to ensure that our exclusive regulatory and policy structure is preserved, maintained, and built upon,” said the advisor. He emphasized that there was a strong connection between local language editions of website and penetration of Internet inside our society.

He valued the efforts put in by PTA to execute its notion of facilitating the telecommunication consumer by introducing new platforms. He said that this new edition of PTA website would embark a new horizon of telecommunication information dissemination to the people of Pakistan. The Government will ensure continued encouragement and support in this regard, he added

Chairman PTA briefed the Advisor to the Prime Minister on structure, scope and achievements made by PTA. He said that PTA believes that lack of local language content is one of the main hurdles behind the proliferation of Broadband Internet services in Pakistan. “We are collaborating with industry and academia to bridge this vital gap and offer local content and applications to people of Pakistan. The launch of Urdu version of PTA website is a major landmark in the Internet history of Pakistan where PTA has marked itself as the first-ever governmental organization to introduce full-content version of website in Urdu.

PTA has granted license to these operators in November 2004 to establish, maintain and operate a Telecommunication System in Gujrawala and Rawalpindi and Telecom Regions. Each licensee was obliged to establish at least one Network Connection Point in each licensed region and commence the provision of Mandatory Services within eighteen (18) months from the effective date i.e. the date of issuance of the license. This is the third deadline extended by the telecom watchdog. Earlier, it has asked these two licencees for rolling out their network within the specified time period keeping in view the difficulties of networking deployment has been faced by firms. However, the authority issued show-cause notices to these two operators in August 2009 for the failure of compliances.

In reply to PTA, WLL license holders said the spectrum fees and recurring annual charges caused the delay in the operations but established their networks and installed equipments in many parts of the telecom region.

They said the network operations are underway and projects entered in the final phase. The major problem exists in interconnectivity operations, which the service-provider has failed to render them. PTA has conducted inspections of WLL firms sites having infrastructure laid down and resolved WLLs’ issues with services providers on interconnections. It warned WLL licencees to complete their mandatory operations within the new deadline, otherwise the authority will withdraw their unused spectrum bands and licenses

The regulator has proposed a substantial increase in annual specturm fees after lapse of ten years in order to maintain the quality of spectrum utility and its growing demand.

Presently, there are about 769 licencees in this category including 495 private licencees, 251 Government licencees and 23 NGOs/foreign missions. Existing charges are based on Bandwidth (BW) and Power (in Watts) varying for commercial and Non-commercial (NC). This type of license is given to the users in closed communication group. It is also known as ‘VHF Wireless License’. In some of the other countries, this type of license is termed as Business Radio (including PBR, PAMR). This communication system uses base station and mobiles for dedicated use by specific organizations such as the radio systems used by Law Enforcement Agencies, Fire Brigades, Airlines, Oil exploration companies, Industrial setups and Radio Cabs service.

The phased implementation plan has been prepared to implement the proposed charges gradually in three years. This will give reasonable time to both PTA and operators to fine-tune the fee level and usage (amount of spectrum) respectively.

For Land Mobile Wireless license (commonly known as VHF Wireless), the proposed rates are based on weighted linear formula, keeping in view the present spectrum demand. Proposals related to fixed links in any frequency band have been discussed in fixed point-to-point (P2P) charging regime. A common formula for fixed P2P links in all the frequency bands has been proposed. The proposed fees for broadcasting services consist of two components to avoid existing disparities.

In case of ground to air communication in Aeronautical Navigation Service, the fee proposals are based on new VHF wireless station fee. New charging regime for Maritime Communication Service has been formulated in light of the fact that PTA has planned to introduce the licensing for this service in near future.

The existing annual fees for Land Mobile Wireless operators vary from Rs 400 to Rs 10,000. The fees proposed by the authority vary between Rs 9,000 and Rs 18,000 depending on the operator’s capacity and equipments. The same variation in charges has been proposed for for- ground-to-air communication. The existing charges for VHF Mobile stations were fixed at Rs 1250 and Rs 3750, which have been proposed to be increased from Rs 3600 to Rs 6,000. The present annual fees of broadcasters vary from Rs 2,000 to Rs 30,000, which are suggested to move up from Rs 54,500 to Rs 163,600 depending on the frequency utilisation.

The regulator has devised some formulae to increase the annual license fees for other commercial users of radio services, which has been decided to increase in phases also. PTA states the pricing of spectrum access rights should be designed to maximise the benefits from its use that would shore up the economy to grow. However, there is no scarcity, that is, demand can be met by available supply then price should be limited to the recovery of the regulator’s costs.

The regulator will offer ‘Auctions’ s to determine the level of charges in the case of excess demand. The present frequency spectrum charging regime was developed in the year 2000 based on which, PTA receives annual radio spectrum charges from its users. This is primarily a flat charging mechanism, which was defined keeping in view a very few variables involved.

The PTA, in its annual report for 2008-09, said 7,479 complaints were registered against mobile phone companies.

Most of the complaints (40 per cent) were about misuse of service, obnoxious and fraudulent calls and SMS and illegal practices. After the SIM verification system became operational, 13 per cent complaints were made regarding transfer of connection ownership, issuance of SIMs, blocking of numbers and SIMs without notification and non-registration of SIMs.

The PTA reported 9 per cent complaints were pertaining to service activation, restoration, closure and upgrading while six per cent complaints were about poor customer services.

In addition to those, complaints were also received against obnoxious calls and value added services. The PTA said 95 per cent complaints were resolved during the year.

In the same year, the PTA also received complaints against Pakistan Mobile Database, a company responsible for Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

This year again, service disruption remained one of the major complaints. There were almost 5 per cent complaints related to matters of billing, overcharging, unjustified deduction, tariffs and non-issuance of bills.

In the report, the PTA in its comments said: “In today’s competitive scenario in the telecom industry, it is not the length of time that an operator has been functioning, rather the quality of service and an operator’s willingness to cater to ever-changing and expanding needs of consumers that earns subscriber satisfaction.”

Extensive consultations with the relevant operators and stakeholders were carried out for the development of these QoS parameters. The KPIs were finalised after discussing the varying views in detail with all concerned bodies, which were incorporated in the final version. The document has also been made available on PTA’s website (www.pta.gov.pk).

The KPIs have been developed through keeping in view their applicability, possibility of end-to-end testing (non-intrusive for network under test), ease of measurement, ease of understanding for a field testing person, similar treatment of rural and urban regions in terms of service offerings and a push for future improvement in wireless broadband networking. The KPIs’ suite envelops parameters like Network Availability, Service availability, link speed, retainability, bandwidth, contention ratio, round trip time, tariff comparison, customer service complaints, billing complaints and service provisioning complaints, as appropriate.

It may be mentioned that GPRS and EDGE are GSM wireless packet data transfer standards commonly referred to as 2.5G and 2.75G, respectively. Using these networks; services like internet connectivity, push-based email solutions with attachment facility, pull-based services, instant messenger etc are being offered to help in accessing personal or official information while roaming locally or globally. Better GPRS/EDGE networks are also necessary for introduction of more innovative value-added services in future.

PTA has been striving to serve the telecom and ICT sector of Pakistan for its growth and development through different initiatives. Introduction of KPIs’ for broadband services is an effort to achieve PTA’s vision of ‘protecting consumer interest and ensuring high quality ICT services’.

(via:DailyTimes)