668 SIM Information System Launched at PTA Consumer Forum

On the occasion of Telecom Consumer Forum, organized by PTA, Chairman PTA Dr. Muhammad Yaseen is addressing the participants. Secretary Information Technology & Telecom Naguib Ullah Malik and Member Technical PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar are also seen

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) organized telecom consumer forum with a theme "Together for Consumer Rights". Secretary IT & Telecom, Mr. Naguib Ullah Malik was the chief guest while Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen presided over the Forum. Member (Technical) PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar, renowned poet Mr. Amjad Islam Amjad, representatives of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Cellular Mobile and Fixed Line sectors, telecom consumer groups, academia and the media community also participated in the event. President Pakistan Consumers Association, Kokab Iqbal and representatives of Cellular, Fixed Line and Broadband Services gave presentations during the Forum.
In this event, the Secretary IT formally inaugurated a new service named "SIM Information System – 668" introduced by PTA to enable the mobile subscribers to know the total number of SIMs issued against their respective CNIC number with each mobile operator.
Mr. Naghuib Ullah Malik said that Government is facilitating telecom industry so that it continues to grow. He said that the Government wanted development in the telecom sector which was growing at fast pace during last few years. While talking about "SIM Information System – 668" he appreciated this initiative taken by PTA and said that it is crucial to safeguard our communication systems so that they don't fall into the wrong hands and for that purpose this new system introduced by PTA will play an effective role.
While addressing the consumer forum Chairman PTA said that the Authority is cognizant of telecom consumer's needs and taking number of steps to facilitate them in resolving their issues. In this regard PTA has revamped complaint handling mechanism of mobile companies, PTCL and other telecom operators. Launch of this new service is yet another evidence of PTA's sincerity towards its vision of protection of telecom consumers and their rights. He said that every mobile user can know number of SIMs issued against his CNIC with the mobile company name by sending his CNIC number without dashes and spaces to 668 through SMS. Rs.2/- will be charged on each SMS which is inclusive of all taxes. In case of unauthorized numbers against his CNIC number, a consumer can get the data corrected from the concerned mobile operator's Customer Services Center. The unauthorized SIM owners will be advised to register the SIM in their names within seven days of notification from concerned Customer Services Center otherwise their calling facility will be stopped after thirteen days and the SIM will be completely blocked after seventeen days of that notice. This service will help in further streamlining the data of mobile phone users.
Chairman PTA said that in order to address the issue of unauthorized SIMs PTA first revamped the system of sale and registration of SIMs and now it has introduced this service which would allow mobile subscribers to get those SIMs blocked which presently are not under their usage. This system provides an Internet and SMS based interface to end-users in order to retrieve the registered mobile SIMs information. He said that it is a robust, secure and efficient sysytem to store a record size of approx 100 Million subscribers' data. The system ensures proper data integrity mechanism while answering back to multiple queries at a specific time.
The Chairman said that PTA has always been engaged in facilitating telecom consumers with best telecom services along with the due protection of their rights. The efforts of PTA, in this regard, have been translated in its consumer-oriented initiatives like Mobile Number Portability (MNP), system to block stolen mobiles through IMEI number, establishment of Consumer Protection Department for the redressal of consumer grievances, 7 to 8 digit Numbering Plan for fixed line, new consumer friendly SIM Activation System, lowest telecom tariffs amidst competitive environment etc.
Dr. Mohammed Yaseen said that the statistics of telecom growth in Pakistan are evident of the satisfaction level of telecom consumers with the quality of telecom services provided to them. He said that the overall teledensity in the country has reached 61.80%. There are currently 95.54 million mobile subscribers and the cellular segment leads the share in total teledensity followed by Fixed Land Line (FLL) with 3.5 million subscribers and Wireless Local Loop (WLL) with 2.6 million total subscribers.
Via ProPakistani.PK

Pakistan Telecom Sector Growing Faster than India: PTA Chief

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Dr Mohammad Yasin has said that Pakistan telecommunication sector has been growing faster than that of India with over 62 percent teledensity, encouraging the foreign direct investment (FDI), during an interview with Business Recorder. Dr. Yasin said that India lagged far behind Pakistan with 37 percent teledensity as compared to 62 percent in Pakistan.
He added that Pakistan's FDI policy was much more liberal than that of India to attract more investment in Pakistan telecom sector. The PTA Chairman said that the ever-growing teledensity of Pakistan was giving new opportunities to the investors for better returns, especially in the field of data services. Services like mobile internet, mobile banking and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) hold fortunes for any wise investor.
"Telecom analysts around the world still believe in Pakistan to be a lucrative market and Business Monitor forecasts that mobile subscribers in Pakistan would hit 100-million mark by next year", Yasin said. The sector has been growing at a rapid pace where growth rates have become the hallmark. However, slow growth was witnessed for the first time ever last year, he added.
Although slow growth, of only 7 percent, was observed in mobile sector last year, this trend cannot be attributed only to saturation as there are factors like international financial crisis, devaluation of rupee, security situation and re-registration of SIM programme.
"We do agree that saturation is there, but only in metropolitan areas. Moreover, the people are still keeping more than one SIM. So, one can say that sector would continue to grow though not as fast as before", he said. He said that PTA was trying level best to bring more growth to the sector and was taking every possible regulatory measure to ensure healthy competition beneficial to the telecom users.
"PTA has taken a number of initiatives which are proving to be very helpful, especially in the field of broadband proliferation, LDI re-emergence, and WiMax popularity", said Dr Yasin. He further said that PTA was focusing on growth of broadband. Currently the number of subscribers is 0.4 million approximately, whereas growth rate of broadband services was 146 percent in 2008-09.
He said that WiMax has a brilliant future in Pakistan and this is further strengthened by the promising start of companies like Wateen, Wi-Tribe, etc. "With more companies jumping into the market, the competition level will rise to compel the companies to bring down the tariffs, especially CPE charge", he added.
The PTA Chairman said that in addition, other technologies like Evolution Data Only/Evolution Data Optimised (EVDO) and WorldCall introduced in Pakistan by PTCL are gaining good momentum. He said that Mobile internet held a very bright future in a country where mobile penetration was more than 57 percent.
"However, the only setback that our mobile subscriber has is low literacy rate that hampers use of internet. Also, the lack of availability of local content is another reason, which could pose problems for wider adoption of internet by mobile community," he added.
"PTA is now focused on content development and aggregation, especially for education purposes", he said. Dr Yasin said that he did not believe that there was room for monopolies in the sector. "However, we do have to face the Significant Market Player (SMP) operator's issues with rest of the players".
"We do determine the SMP operator in each segment of telecom on yearly basis. We have also drafted competition rules that clearly protect operators from any anti-competitive practices by SMP's", he added. He said that looking at the current market situation where a feeling of price war was obvious, one could say that product differentiation could be possible on quality and easy availability basis.
Regarding improving 'Average Revenue Per User' (ARPU), he said that improvement in ARPU's data service like m-banking or mobile internet would be the solution. "Maybe, 95 million mobile users will be waiting to open their accounts", he added. He further said that currently in Pakistan five cellular operators have healthy competitive environment.
"Due to growing revenues and fair competition in the market, I believe that operators will continue to provide telecom services in Pakistan and value-addition and innovation is way forward for telecom operators' growth", he said. About 3G service in Pakistan he said, "Each and every technology and service has its future, and it caters a potential segment of the society."
Via Business Recorder

PTA Questions Ufone Regarding Super Ghanta Offer [Update]

After Telenor approached PTA with a request to consider the details of Ufone's Super Ghanta offer and to term it anti-competitive due to its nature of off-net hourly calls, sources have told us that authority has questioned Ufone about its Super Ghanta Offer.

PTA has asked Ufone to justify its latest promotion that offers cross subsidiary hourly calls, round the clock.
Ufone's spokesperson was not available for the comment.
Ufone, till the filing of this report has been advertising the said promotion (However it has stopped mentioning 6 Paisa per minute tag line – which was actually outshining Telenor's 10 Paisa promotion).
It merits mentioning here that promotion will remain valid till 28th of Ramadan, so PTA has got little time to cope with the matter.

No Plan to Monitor Phone Calls, Texts or Emails: PTA

As we had mentioned in our previous post regarding the draft of Monitoring of Telephony traffic, PTA has denied the fact that it will intercept traffic, in fact it wants to calculate, evaluate and analyze the amount of traffic flowing in and out of the telecom networks.

Following is the complete details of PTA's clarification
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has not formed, nor does it intend to form any regulations to monitor telecom traffic including phones calls, e-mails and text messages.
Denying news reports detailing PTA's plans to monitor all telecommunication traffic, a PTA spokesman said monitoring cyber and telecom traffic was never the PTA's mandate. Hence, the question of curbing freedom of expression does not arise in this particular case, he said. The spokesman said the PTA, in its efforts to curb illegal telecommunication traffic (grey traffic) coming into Pakistan from abroad, had installed state-of-the-art filters.
These filters account for all inbound telecom traffic, ensuring that only authorised means are being used for data transfer, billing verification and assuring the quality of service as required under law. During the past few months, PTA has seized a number of illegal exchanges and apprehended several individuals, including foreigners, involved in illegal telecommunications activities, which were causing billions of rupees in losses to the national exchequer, the spokesman said. These arrests might have fuelled the stories in the media about the monitoring of telecommunication traffic by the PTA, he added.
Via Daily Times

PTA Intends to Monitor Telephony Traffic

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has drafted a regulation called, "Monitoring and Reconciliation of Telephony Traffic Regulations, 2009", and has asked industry to give input on said draft before September 16th, 2009.

As per intended regulation, all telecom service providers will install system at their own cost to make it possible for authority to monitor telephony traffic.
Regulation says that such a monitoring system should have at least following features

• Capability to monitor, control, measure and record traffic in real-time;
• Capability for complete signaling record, including but not limited for billing;
• Capability to accurately measure the quality of service;
• A complete list of the Pakistani customers; and
• Complete details of capacity leased by the licensee(s) to their customers.

Once regulated, this monitoring system will enable PTA to check and analyze voice and data traffic flowing in and out of a network, from inside and outside the country.
Draft says that purpose of this regulation is to monitor and enforce the accurate presentation of the total traffic terminated through networks to measure and record for billing verification, detect & control grey traffic, and determine the quality of licensed services.
Consumers have shown their reservations over monitoring of their voice and data calls. Their protest is very natural as no one would want anyone to hear his/her phone call – despite the fact that its not exclusively mentioned in draft that authority will intercept calls.
It merits mentioning here that PTA had proposed ICH (International Clearing House) last year for similar purpose; however, this regulation is more than what ICH originally was.
Government is apparently more interested in calculating the amount of minutes to well tax the companies instead of intercepting calls, as concerned agencies already have exclusive rights to track and monitor voice traffic of the country.
Recently PTA had asked ISPs to monitor all data traffic and to block VoIP traffi, which didn't get good response from the industry.
Download Regulation Draft from here