Tee Emm's Window to Pakistan

Moving!

2006-09-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is moving. The new home for this blog is now athttp://pakng.wordpress.comI have a number of my reasons for moving my blog from blogger.com to wordpress.com which forms the first post at the new home.As a symbol of evolution, the title of this blog 'Tee Emm's Window to Pakistan' which was apt when the blog started somewhere in year 2000 has now been changed to 'Tee Emm on Pakistan Next

Newsbite: Telenor's Edge

2006-09-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

Telenor's latest advertisement promoting their EDGE offering in the bigger cities of Pakistan.Mobile Internet will be an high growth sector in Pakistan. Once, arond 1997, SMS was the only 'data thing' the general public could do on the bulky handsets. Today, in just less than a decade, even the Pakistani market is getting its taste of EDGE (left) and even faster CDMA2000 1X (153 kbps/Telecard)

'Imported' Internet

2006-09-07T03:09:00.000-07:00

Subsequent to PTA's public solicitation, I've submitted my comments to the Consultation Paper on Bandwidth Tariffs issued by PTA on September 4th, 2006. I am re-producing the same here:Following are my comments on the paper:[Page 10]: Yes. The list of the countries sh ould be further expanded. While the current list contains neighbouring countries, we need to look up the tariffs in European and

Bandwidth Tariffs - PTA Seeks Comments

2006-09-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has published a Consultation Paper on the issue of revising (downwards) the prevalent Bandwidth Tariffs in Pakistan. As most readers of this blog must be aware, the earlier orders of downward rates revision of PTA were met with stiff resistance from the born-again PTCL which revised the rates based on its own scheme (and which were higher than what PTA was

Internet Governance in Pakistan (II)

2006-09-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

We have got some detailed comments on my blog on Internet Governance in Pakistan. Just to put the record straight, I have never suggested that Government in Pakistan should be managing any aspect of the Internet - whether name registration or Internet address resources management. I have been proposing functional participation of the GoP in these activities in the capacity of a 'stake holder'

Third CDMA Operator in Karachi

2006-08-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

Worldcall concluded its supply and built deal for its CDMA Wireless Local Loop business in Karachi with Huawei. The deal, reportedly valued at $10 million, is among the series of business wins that the Chinese vendor has recently secured in Pakistan.This brings the count of CDMA operators in Karachi to three - Telecard's Go CDMA, PTCL's VPTCL and Worldcall's Worldcall Wireless. If the

Mitnick's Legend Still Attract Hackers from Pakistan

2006-08-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Kevin Mitnick's legend lives strong in the young crowd of Pakistani hackers and script kiddies. While most of you must be reading the Internet and the newspapers about the history-making Oval incident of the Cricket world, a group of hackers operating out of Pakistan defaced a number of websites of former convicted hacker. More details about the defacement are available here.

Internet Governance in Pakistan

2006-08-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Some quick facts before we begin: Government of Pakistan and all its IT and Telecom departments are typically the last one to understand any new concept specially if it is related to new age communication and Internet. [There are smart guys in these ranks, no doubt, but I am talking about the outcomes, such as legislations and 'instructions' that come out of these

Is your ISP ready for Vista?

2006-08-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's oft-delayed, next generation operating platform - Vista is now expected to arrive in January 2007. Vista is reported to be extensive on collaboration and security fronts. To achieve many of the new feats that Vista promises to its users, the 1-Gig OS requires IPv6.All applications made for the new platform are IPv4/IPv6 compliant and some are reportedly IPv6 only. Since Microsoft

Pakistan IPv6 Operators List

2006-08-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

After the Pv6 Forum's first ever event in Pakistan on Saturday, a virtual community of operators has been established for experimenting with and eventually deploying IPv6 in networks in Pakistan. For now, it is in the form of this mailing list to which interested local operators (technical staff only please) can subscribe to.Other information about IPv6, its deployment, benefits (and IPv6 related

NSP, SANOG8 and IPv6

2006-08-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

PTA's blog ban has apparently been effective - at to me as the author of this blog. Since the blogspot.com domain is blocked at the (almost) sole upstream ISP (PTCL) in Pakistan, it is only natural for the blog authors to loose the confidence on the mass readership of their blogs in their very own country. Tools like pkblog.com can help bypass this ban but as soon as you loose the first level

Outage on SMW3

2006-02-22T20:19:00.000-08:00

Feb 22nd, 2006 witnessed an outage of 12 hours (from around 8 in the morning till the evening) due to an optical fiber cut somewhere within Karachi.Pakistan Internet Exchange shifted its traffic to other providers that had their circuits terminating via the SMW4 undersea optical fiber cable - thus saving the masses from a complete blackout. This is in-line with the expectations assosiated with

Blackberry Slow Death

2006-02-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

Too bad Mobilink just launched their BB services in Pakistan (and that too is getting a knock-out competition from the CDMA data offering of WLL providers). Anyway, Wired wants us to believe that very soon, the 'push' magic of BB will be a commoners taken-for-granted service with the new smart phones loaded with Windows Mobile 5.0 platform.Wired News: MS Venture Nips at BlackberryOn the opening

Pak India Fiber Link Up - Who Wins?

2006-01-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

Pakistan and India are getting more and more close to having a fiber link between their networks and following news item is an update on this initiative. It is a no-brainer to realize that the chief beneficiary of this link would be India telecos with lots of spare BW who would use the link to sell Internet BW to Pakistani market. With a negligible Call Center and other BPO market in Pakistan (

Good News for CDMA networks in Pakistan?

2006-01-07T02:46:00.000-08:00

May be CDMA networks in Pakistan (currently Telecard (nationwide), Dialog (Islamabad)) are getting more lucky. Poor GPRS (@ 20 kbps) is already no match for the 100+ kbps average performance that is available on CDMA networks (even in Pakistan).Google Awarded Patent To Make Data Move Faster to Wireless Phones and DevicesGoogle Awarded Patent To Make Data Move Faster to Wireless Phones and

SMW4 Mitigates Total Blackouts

2006-01-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

Finally, Pakistan can rely on an alternative optical fiber linkage between itself and the rest of the world. SMW4 has been ligthened up. According to industry reports, FLAG circuits coming to ITI PTCL have already been shifted on this media a few days ago.SMW4 inauguration Ceremony Dubai 13th December 2005Duabi , December 13, 2005 - ( CGEP.PA et NYSE: ALA), A consortium of 16 partners,

Send that snap to win this offer!

2005-11-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

Taking snaps off your cell phone is no longer a personal pass-time. It can form the basis of next generation business transaction and consumer relationships.

Google's Death Foretold

2005-11-22T05:22:00.000-08:00

While I was still enjoying the story/prediction/speculation) about 'How Will Google Grow', Jack Shafer wrote about 'How Will Google Die'."Having plunged into too many businesses at once, Google had become distracted. Regulators throttled its local Wi-Fi initiative. Its plan to build out ad-supported computer services?word processors, spreadsheets, databases?for end users had died when Microsoft

Google Data Center, Coming to an NLC container near you!

2005-11-20T23:23:00.000-08:00

Even if it is pure fiction, it cannot get any more entertaining than that: "The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial

Skype Ready to Help Quake Disaster Recovery

2005-11-19T02:42:00.000-08:00

Good see that peer-to-peer VoIP application Skype is offering help to Pakistan in Quake Relief Efforts: DRN is working with Pakistan's Ministry of IT to locate the resources needed to re-establish the telecommunications infrastructure and install emergency wireless/satellite capabilities in the affected areas. Skype Technologies, the developer of software that supports free global phone

Google's Al Qaeda To Make Your Data Application Free!

2005-11-16T00:09:00.000-08:00

Google launches its own Al Qaeda! aka Google Base : First off, some explanation about the blogs headline: Al Qaeda is 'Base' in Arabic. There you go! :) See Google's own (reverse) definition. Back to the news "Today we're excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables

Jokes of Future?

2005-11-12T05:38:00.000-08:00

More on new user experiences: Seems like voo2do.com has some competition - and some stiff one. Faisal pointed me towardsRemember The Milk: "Achieve Domestic Bliss.Never forget the milk (or anything else) again." I wonder why would I want to share my chores (and other TO Do stuff) with the rest of the world via the ATOM feed feature available with the site. Another destined-to-be-a-joke-later-on

No-GYM

2005-11-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

Om Malik again has a fresh idea. No-GYM. A time when bloggers decided together not to talk about the big threes (Google, Yahoo and MS). I am not sure if this 'campaign' would do any harm to GYM but certainly new stuff will get some attention that is badly needed for any new idea.From: Om Malik's Broadband Blog: Can You Stay GYM Free?: "Today at SearchSIG, Google was mentioned once every five

Calling Web 2.0 Local BoFs!

2005-11-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

Ever since Tim O'Reilly & Media Live hosted the influential Web 2.0 Conference 2005 (see full coverage here) there is too much noice around the web for Web 2.0. Amid all the confusion that is always good for getting popular, the majority is celebrating the birth of this animal. And still, there are some that have started seeing the faults and problems with the newborn.So what exactly is Web 2.0?

Flock is Out!

2005-10-21T02:53:00.000-07:00

David Cowan, Jed Smith, Bryan Bell, Jon Hicks, Kevin Gerich, Vera Horiuchi, Colin Crook, Giorgio Maone, Jeremy Gillick, Bradley Chapman and Samir Boulema - the team behind Flock has posted the early betas (or are they alphas) binaries of the Flock Browser (7.3 MB exe for the Wintel crowd). Flock is based on Mozilla and promises not to fork Firefox code.Flock spins around the idea of being a

2004-08-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

Liberty At Last! New licenses for Long Distance & International (LDI) and Local Loop (LL) operations have been issued by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to a number of companies. Spectrum auction has also taken place for the 1.9 GHz, 479 Mhz, 3.5 GHz and 450 Mhz frequency bands that would be used by these new telecom operators (DVCom, Telecard, WorldCall, Al-Warid), to operate their networks

2004-03-24T04:13:00.000-08:00

Industry Roundup Wireless for Businesses: Wireless communication has the inherent characteristics of requiring minimal physical infrastructure. This advantage of wireless data communication is especially highlighted in the context of countries like Pakistan where the existing copper infrastructure is in bad shape and fiber reach is next to non-existent. Recently, there has been a race between

2003-12-31T22:05:00.000-08:00

Reviewing 2003 – Local Telecom Sector in Perspective The most important development of 2003 in the local telecommunication and information technology sector has been the announcement of the much-awaited Telecom Deregulation Policy in July 2003. Opening of the telecom sectors to competition has been a powerful tool for the governments around the world who leverage it to bring about rapid sector

2003-12-23T04:36:00.000-08:00

PTCL ISDN Services (Tele+) 1. Background PTCL is aggressively marketing the new lot of ISDN lines it has created on the newly acquired Chinese switches in almost all the major exchanges of Karachi. The commercial name of the service is Tele+. 2. How to Get Your ISDN Connection Customers can get an ISDN connection either afresh or get their existing analog line converted to an ISDN. New

2003-08-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

CBR Telecom Equipment Import Procedures Eased up In a positive move, Government's Cabinet Division has addressed the an important problem of the telecom sector investors in Pakistan pertaining to the undue and excessive restrictions that CBR has been exerting on imported telecom items asking for the PTA 'type approval' for the imported equipment. Initially, CBR did not have the 'vision' to see

2003-08-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

Market Confusions Summarized Under PTCL monopoly, basic telephony was the right of PTCL alone. VoIP telephony of all kind was defined (wrongly or rightly) as falling under 'basic telephony' and hence it too was a PTCL-only affair. PTCL created PIE which had reasonable bandwidth rates (which looked tremendously attractive given the artificially high prices of non-PIE bandwidth). Creation of PIE

2003-07-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Swiss vs Local Investors As Owais Laghari, Minister of IT&T defends the Telecom Deregulation Policy, the market described the policy as 'being investor-friendly but choosy about who an "investor" is'. Owais himself is looking towards Switzerland for the investment rather than the smaller players in the local market. Seems like the GoP always had in its mind that it would only be

2003-07-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

The Feedback The feedback has started trickling in from the industry over the recently released 'Telecom Sector Deregularization Policy'. Faisal Khan, CEO Fascom, says that the policy could safely be termed as 'Telecom Remonopolization Act'. Feedback from Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, released to the press today, is here.

2003-07-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

Competing Voices The new Telecom Deregulation Policy [Download 13 Page Document in RTF Format] has been announced opening up the voice market for competition. Twenty-year long licenses for Long Distance and Local Loop operations would be awarded for $500,000 and $10,000 respectively to any party interested in obtaining one. Elegibility critaria includes strict financial and technical requirements

2003-07-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

404 Error - Page (and sanity!) Not Found Pakistan's Internet access disrupted for over 15 hours on July 7, 2003 due to problems in one of the many SPFs (single point of failures) in the current Pakistan Internet Backbone structure. Even a handful of satellite based Internet Gateways spread across the country could have prevented this outage. India permitted Internet Gateways in the private

2003-07-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

Wanna Surf? Look Towards Hawksbay PTCL has reportedly finalized plans to establish a second 'landing point' for an alternate international submarine cable system. Expected to be someone on the Hawksbay (Karachi) beach, the landing point will allow the termination of the SMW4 submarine cable system in Pakistan. Currently, the SMW3 cable system is the only worth-mentioning connection that Pakistan

2003-06-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

PTA ushers SMS Compatibility Pakistan had two GSM and two TDMA public cellular networks for quite some time now. SMS service was available to the users of these networks but it didn't work across the networks. The reason of the problem put forward was more absurd than the problem itself - incompatible networks. In the age of IP, where even a goat can speak to a cow, there should have been no

2003-06-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

Bandwidth Rates Dropped by PTCL PTCL reduces bandwidth charges from US $6,000 per 2 MB to US $5,400 per 2 MB. PTCL has bought an additional STM-1 connectivity from British Telecom (BT) for US $ 54,000 which means an E1 (2 MB) costs PTCL roughly $700 which it is retailing at $5,400 or 800% of the cost! [PTCL charges Rs 55,000 separately for delivering any bandwidth beyond 256 kbps to the customers

2003-06-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

PTCL eats the humble PIE! April 2003 proved to be an eventful month for the Internet community in Pakistan. Everybody - from occasional web surfers to power netizens felt the agonizing pain and frustration that was caused by the repeated, prolonged interruption in the Internet access on a nation-wide basis. For some people who knew the internals of the issue more than others, the whole series of

2003-05-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

Dana Blankenhorn posted some of my email content (sent to him) on his famous Moore's Lore Blog.

2002-12-27T04:40:00.000-08:00

Looking back at 2002 ear 2002 will be marked most prominently as the last year of regulated telecommunication era in Pakistan. A lot of preparation went on the sides of government (which faced a continued transition from a telecommunication service operator to a telecommunication market regulator), the state-owned PTCL (which faced the challenge of a highly competitive deregulated market) and the

2002-12-09T00:34:00.000-08:00

Future of Packetized Voice in Pakistan ear 2003 brings an end to the PTCL's exclusivity on voice in Pakistan in line with Pakistan's commitments to the WTO regime which demands liberated, competitive telecom markets in the signatory countries. It is important to note that it is the Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) whose activities will be the focus of attention in the post deregulation era.

2002-10-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

Holy Absurdity Internet subscribers in Pakistan suffered a big blow in late August 2002 to an essential digital convenience – the ability to make use of cheap Internet-based services that enabled them to 'call' worldwide using Internet Telephony as the underlying technology. Ever since the ISP boom in the county, the state-owned telephone company (PTCL) had been complaining about dropping

2002-01-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

QoS - Quotient of Stupidity PTA advertised a 'worked out' report that, according to it, is an effort towards increasing QoS - Quality of Service in the services of the ISPs in Pakistan. PTA has sought feedback on this effort which was duly sent in my personal capacity. A copy is being posted here for general consumption. Dear PTA, Feedback on the Quality of Service ratings of ISPs 'worked'

2002-01-25T03:48:00.000-08:00

A Letter to Dana Dana Blankenhorn writes a regular newsletter on topics of common interests of today's Internet society. In his recent post of 25th January 2002, Dana wrote something I wanted to comment on. As I finished my responce email to him, I thought I would place it here for general consumption as well. Here's the email: ...... This got me to do some serious thinking. Why do we need

2001-11-28T23:03:00.000-08:00

Bandwidth Bonanza On October 15, 2001, the Minister of Science & Technology made some exciting announcements. For one, he declared that the new lowered bandwidth rates would not be uniformly applicable across the market (be it an ISP, a school or a non-profit organization) - something I stressed in my point 3 of one of my earlier blog. The new bandwidth rates would be US $6,000 per month. Also,

2001-11-03T05:03:00.000-08:00

PTCL Goofups! When it comes to Backbone Internet connectivity, commercial ISPs in Pakistan currently have three options to choose from - i) International Private Leased Circuit, ii) Premium Internet Bandwidth from PIE (PTCL) and iii) Shared Internet Bandwidth from PTCL. All these options are circuits that land somewhere within the premise of PTCL. To make use of any of these circuits, they

2001-08-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

E-Government Plan, An Internet Savvy School and Edunet Pakistan E-Government Plan The recently announced E-Government Plan is ambitious - but full of pitfalls what MoST needs to watch out. Automation brings transparency and makes corruption a difficult proposition. But poorly managed automation is worse than proverbial hand maintained khatha!. Corrupt officials will try to resist this automation

2001-06-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

An Urdu Notepad & A Website for Mangoes Urdu Notepad? Action Requested from Readers! Once again, the local press has re-reported the GOP notification of the Urdu Code Plate. As a nation, we took a long time to wake up to the worldwide boom of IT sector. And no wonder why before 2000 we did not have an approved, standardized Urdu Code Plate. A code plate is a standard that dictates how would

2001-06-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

Cisco Systems Exhibition in Karachi Cisco Systems is holding a product and solutions exhibition in Karachi tomorrow (14th June, 2001). The local tech community is generally excited about the event. However, the excitement level is not what it would have been if the exhibition were to take place six months ago. The US economy slowdown has definitely affected the local market as well which

2001-06-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

PTCL brings high speed Internet link home Ok. It's here. PTCL has linked up its countrywide optic fiber ring with an OC-3 Internet backbone obtained from QWest (US). The prices are also good. Instead of costing you an arm and a leg, an E1 (2 mega bits per second) circuit will cost only US $ 15,000. While critics maintain that this chunk still costs PTCL less than $5,000 and PTCL is making a

2001-06-06T02:58:00.000-07:00

Pakistan Internet Society The Ministry of Science and Technology is about to notify the establishment of Pakistan Internet Society or PISOC as it is affectionately being called. The establishment of PISOC is a solid step, and in the right direction as well, towards the positive growth of Internet in Pakistan. PISOC will consist of two arms called Pakistan Internet Engineering Task Force (PIETF