Warid Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd. country’s most popular cellular service introduces another exciting service that allows Warid customers to send and receive International MMS. Initially this service is offered in China, Thailand, Australia, UAE and Saudi Arabia and the list of destinations is rapidly increasing. Both prepaid and postpaid customers can use this service. The maximum size of the International MMS is 100kb with the tariff of Rs. 10 + tax per MMS while the tariff to receive an international MMS is just Rs. 3 + tax or as per the customer’s GPRS package plan. Warid International Roaming has many other innovative products such as SMS Roaming, Safe Arrival SMS, WiFi Roaming, In-Flight Roaming and Maritime Roaming which allow customers to stay connected to home, whether they travel by sea, air or land. Warid offers international roaming with 237 live GSM roaming partners in 143 countries also collaborating with 130 live GPRS roaming partners in 94 countries. Not only this, but the mesh of prepaid roaming service has now been extended within 28 countries, covering about 70% of the world including Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia. Warid continues to stand out with plenty of tailored services and solutions allowing Warid subscribers to stay connected with their loved ones anywhere in the world.

According to WSJ, Apple will launch 2 iPhones in this summer instead of one. Apple launches one new iPhone each year in June and July since its launch in 2007.

One iPhone will be for U.S. mobile phone operator Verizon Wireless. This new model will be with CDMA capability used by Verizon Wireless. With launch by Apple and Verizon iPhone set, AT&T will lose its competitive edge over Verizon and other operators. AT&T is enjoying an exclusive relationship with Apple from last three years over iPhone in US market.

CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) is based on several protocols used in 2G, 3G and 4G cellular communications. CDMA is the technology that is used by Verizon, Sprint Corp. and a few other operators in countries including South Korea and Japan.

The model based on CDMA capability, for Verizon Wireless, will be manufactured by Taiwanese company Pegatron Technology Corp. This will be the first iPhone based on CDMA technology.

Second iPhone will be with GSM/UMTS standard and AT&T’s network is based on this technology. GSM is used by most of the carriers throughout world. This iPhone will be manufactured by Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which produced Apple’s previous iPhones in last 3 years.

Samsung launched this mobile a few days ago at CTIA 2010. This Smartphone is equipped with 4-inch touch Super AMOLED-display processor with 1 GHz, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, USB 2.0 and A-GPS. Samsung is going to start sales in near future.

Pakistan has jumped 11 places from last year’s 98 to 87 in the rankings of the Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010 released on Thursday by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Pakistan has done well to make a significant leap and should continue to do so if more investments are made in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, related services and more broadly, innovation.

“It is evident that technology is playing a leading role in accelerating economic growth and promoting development,” said Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) Chief Executive Officer Arthur Bayhan. CSF, a partner institute of WEF, is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Finance, government of Pakistan and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), established to reposition Pakistan’s economy on a more competitive global footing.

Bayhan pointed out that CSF has carried out a policy action plan in 2008-09 to mobilise a dialogue across the telecommunication value chain to define the challenges that confront Pakistan’s telecom and IT industry and to address these challenges. The exercise resulted in an action agenda to tackle constraints and better position the ICT sector in Pakistan to take advantage of opportunities for growth.

“Now within 18 months of the exercise, many of the suggested initiatives and recommendations have taken effect so as to reshape the telecom industry in the most efficient and effective manner. CSF believes that through this focused initiative it has helped transform the Pakistan telecom domain,” Bayhan said.

Published for the ninth consecutive year with an extensive coverage of 133 economies worldwide, the Global IT Report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.

This year, Sweden, Singapore and Denmark have secured the top three places, consolidating the fact that these countries have the most solid ICT base. The United States has slipped two places to fifth. China (37) and India (43) lead the BRIC economies and continue to show an upward trend with a 9 and 11 place improvement respectively.

Pakistan has fared particularly well in the sub-indexes of Individual Readiness – mobile cellular tariffs (8) and residential telephone connection charge (11) while under the sub-index of Business Readiness the country does good in business telephone connection charge (15) and business monthly telephone subscription (17).

A marked improvement has been seen in Pakistan’s capacity for innovation, which has gone up from 73 last year, to 56 this time but it still requires further improvement. There have been slight improvements in quality of educational systems, up from 104 last year to 99, internet access in schools improving by six places to 75 and company spending on R&D getting better by six places to stand at 80. One of the recommendations put forward by CSF in the action plan was that the telecom operators in Pakistan adopt strategies for creating a conducive and competitive infrastructure cost sharing environment. Accordingly, major cellular operators of the country have signed agreements to get involved in infrastructure cost sharing thereby reducing infrastructure duplication and costs, noted Bayhan. CSF also recommended amplifying the bundled offers like voice and SMS with value-added services like MMS, Mobile TV, Mobile Banking, GPRS etc.

Although Pakistan’s overall rank has improved, some of its competitive disadvantages identified by the Global IT Report are the unsuccessfully long procedures to enforce a contract (120), extremely low expenditure on education (120) and equally low enrollment in tertiary education (116). The country still ranks low in political and regulatory environment (97), infrastructure environment (115), environment component (98) and usage component (94).

Significant drops were seen in university-industry collaboration in R&D from 82 last year to 92, government prioritisation of ICT falling from 57 in 2008-09 to 74 this year and a drop of 11 places in intellectual property protection, down from 84 to 95.

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) featured in the report, examines how prepared countries are to use ICT effectively on three dimensions: the general business, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; the readiness of the three key stakeholder groups in a society: individuals, businesses and government and use and benefit from ICT; and the actual usage of the latest information and communication technologies available. The NRI uses a combination of data from publicly available sources, as well as results of the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by WEF with its network of partner institutes in the countries included in the report. The survey provides unique data on many qualitative dimensions important to access national networked readiness.

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Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) will encourage and facilitate Local Content Providers to participate in the ICT based economy growth in the country.

In view of the importance of local contents and applications for future promotion of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) industry and infrastructure, PTA in collaboration with Motorola organized an exclusive conference on “Promoting ICT Sector” here, today. Secretary IT & Telecom, Naguibullah Malik, Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen, Member (Finance) PTA, Syed Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member (Technical) PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar, leading representatives from IT & telecommunication sector and renowned academic & research scholars attended the conference.

Through this conference, a unique platform was provided to potential content providers to present their applications and ideas linked with ICT usage and development. Nine (9) local content providers displayed their applications during the conference which were highly appreciated by the ICT industry.  This conference was planned to spot the latest access technologies in the country and understand the challenges faced by telecom industry in terms of high cost of ownership and OPEX.

Addressing the conference Secretary IT & Telecom said that for the promotion of ICT sector in Pakistan, there is an acute need of bringing consensus among the Government, IT Industry, Telcos and academia to map out effective strategies for the best utilization of available opportunities in this sector. In this regard, he appreciated this initiative of PTA for providing an important platform for some constructive dialogue and discussion.

Secretary IT drew attention of the participants to four main focus areas which could give a boost to the development of ICT sector. Those areas include IT & Telecom education, research, entrepreneurship and local industries. He said that to carry out productive work in these areas, support of an efficient policy is also mandatory, for which the Government is working extensively and soon this policy will be introduced to the industry.

Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen said that the telecom sector of Pakistan has shown a rapid growth in the last few years. Especially the voice segment has been leading the other segments of telecommunication. Today, we have around 97.6 million cellular subscribers with total teledensity reaching upto 63.5%. However, the sector is still under-served as far as broadband is concerned.  He said that the key issue in further development of data segment is non-availability of local contents and applications which can contribute towards formulation of ICT-based economy.

He also highlighted the role of academia as a potential contributor of this sector. He said that a few educational institutes in Pakistan are already engaged in conducting useful research work but the contributory role of academia at large is, unfortunately, a ‘missing link’. At present, Pakistan’s telecom sector is in dire need of establishing strong academia linkage with industry and government to accelerate future technical excellence and entrepreneurship. He said that we need to encourage the participation of all stakeholders in this effort so that the issues, problems and barriers faced by the industry in the promotion of ICT sector may be highlighted and addressed properly hence the appropriate way outs to those problems can also be identified.

In reference to its endeavors for the development of ICTs in Pakistan, Dr. Yaseen said that PTA has taken number of initiatives to launch and promote new innovative solutions for the betterment of telecom industry and society and would continue its efforts till the set objectives are achieved completely. He invited all the stake holders to join their hands with PTA in order to bring about spectacular growth in the ICT sector as well as to enhance their own business in the market.

It may be mentioned that development of ICTs has become an important growth factor for countries around the globe. With every passing day, the world is edging into an information-based age. The rapid evolution of ICTs is clearly re-shaping daily lives, enhancing productivity and transforming the economies.

For the facilitation of general public and telecom users, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has launched the Urdu version of its official website on Internet. In this connection, an inaugural ceremony was held at PTA Headquarters, Islamabad. Advisor to the Prime Minister on IT, Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa formally inaugurated PTA website.  Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen, Member (Finance) PTA, Syed Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member (Technical) PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar were also present on the occasion.

This new Urdu version of PTA website would contain the same contents of the English version converted into simple Urdu language with similar layout and design. This step has been taken in view of providing online information to those internet users who are generally less-educated in web-surfing or less-familiar with English language. Now, they would also be able to enjoy the same facility and could access the online available information regarding PTA activities, decisions, policies, Consumer Protection regulation and Complaint Management System through a simple click.

The users would also be able to access various online services of PTA. PTA directly receives complaints of telecom consumers on different issues at its headquarters and Zonal offices as well as at its website. A special CMS (Content Management System) has also been developed for this website to integrate the new consumer complaint system with the telecommunication operators. The new complaint system would also provide a multilingual interface to the consumer both in English and Urdu. Under the link titled “shikayaat” the consumers could lodge their complaints by filling and submitting a simple online complaint form. Besides, SIM Information System 668, Blocking of Stolen handsets through IMEI number, Telecom Sector Indicators and other such services would also be available on Urdu version of PTA’s website..

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Advisor on IT & Telecom, Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa appreciated PTA efforts for achieving remarkable progress in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. He said that the Government is 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. He emphasized that there is 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. He said that 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. This also demonstrates PTA’s effort to encourage local content in order to bring Internet nearer to the people.

It may be mentioned that Urdu version of PTA’s website is developed by using Unicode font’s standard. Unicode standard (UTF-8) comes up with an added advantage that there is no need to install Urdu fonts at the client side.

Warid offers range of innovative value added services. After phenomenal success of Anonymous Chat and Zem Gup Lagao Service (777) now Warid brings ‘IM over SMS’. It’s a great service that allows Warid customers to stay in touch with the world using all popular Instant Messengers.  Warid adds ‘Strings Category’ on Music Club (444) IVR. This addition is especially made for Warid’s brand ambassadors ‘Strings’.

Knowing that matters the most for the customers Warid introduced another exciting yet informative service ‘BMI’ its an innovative new service for weight and health conscious customers, Warid’s BMI application informs the customer of his BMI (Body Mass Index) based on his height and weight. This SMS based service informs the customer if he is overweight, underweight or healthy and provides specialized health tips for improving BMI customized according to  result.

On Valentines Day Warid also launched Love Quizzes based on exciting questions related to customer love life. The service consists of a number of love based quizzes eg. are you in love, does he/she like me, how deep is your love etc. The service asks the customer 5 questions and according to his response to these questions, it gives him a reading on his love life based on the quiz he chose to take.

Warid is always a step ahead in bringing the most advanced value added services to its customers

Warid brings another great offer for its prepaid customers who have not used their SIMS Since January 01, 2010. All such customers upon reactivating their SIMS will immediately get Rs.30 in their accounts as free activation balance. And not only this, they can also get free balance equal to 50% of their first recharge for three months. So the more a customer recharges the more balance he can get.  Another exciting feature is that the customer can enjoy facility of two numbers in their F&F list, one of Warid and one of any other network with the charges as low as Rs. 1 + Tax/min. This offer is valid till 15th June 2010.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has launched a special program for the promotion of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector of Pakistan. In this connection, an inaugural ceremony was held at PTA Headquarters, Islamabad wherein Advisor to the Prime Minister on IT, Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa formally inaugurated the PTA program while Parliamentary Secretary Interior, Capt (R) Rai Ghulam Mujtaba Kharal, Secretary Cabinet Division, Mr.Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, Secretary IT & Telecom, Mr.Naguibullah Malik, Chairman PTA, Dr.Mohammed Yaseen, Member (Finance) PTA, Syed Nasrul Karim Ghaznavi, Member (Technical) PTA, Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar and representatives of IT & telecom industry were also present on the occasion.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Advisor on IT & Telecom, Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa said that the Government is committed to enhancing the quality of manpower in the ICT sector. He said that we will continue to provide the necessary support to industry and the academia. Following the global scenario of technological development and application promotions, ICT will play even more important role in human society. And to realize that, he said, we need the effort and close cooperation from all of us including operators, equipment manufacturers, content providers and academia. He appreciated the efforts of PTA towards proliferation of ICT sector of the country. He said that the massive growth of telecommunication services is an eye-opener and it is firmly believed that still there is room for expansion and growth. New ICT applications have generated new forms of consumption and attracted large number of consumers.

On this occasion, the Secretary IT & Telecom said that our ICT industry has already been transformed over the last decade. In response to transparent policy and regulatory apparatus, our market has observed liberalization, greater private sector participation and competition. He said that the IT & telecom sector is now a sector dominated by private players competing strategically on new technologies, pricing and customer services. The ICT has emerged as the most promising segment in Pakistan’s economy brining in substantial revenues and creating remarkable job opportunities for the country’s youth.  He said  that  today the Government is committed to support the ICT sector by taking required policy measures. We are in final phase of shaping the future policies for the whole ICT sector. This policy development program is quite open, incorporating a multi stakeholder deliberation. He said that we are targeting to create an environment for the promotion of required content and applications in order to enhance the productivity of our human resource. It is for this reason that we must work harder to ensure that forecasted policy milestones are achieved in a desired manner.  The Government will ensure continued encouragement and support in this regard, he added.

Talking on the event the Chairman PTA said that Pakistan has emerged as one of the leading markets in telecommunications especially in the voice segment. In broadband sector, by December 2008, we had approx 250,000 broadband subscribers and within a span of one year, by December 2009 the figure has just crossed 600,000 showing a massive annual growth rate of more than 200%. However, at the same time, we still are lagging behind in overall broadband penetration. 600,000 subscribers reflects a penetration level of only 0.36%. This is where we require a mutual collaboration for development of local applications and content to promote usage of broadband in all spheres of life. He said, operators are looking for future revenue streams which are very much dependent on availability of value added data services. Key issue in further development of data segment is non-availability of local content and applications which can contribute towards ICT-based economical contribution. That is why, today, the PTA’s main focus is on the development of local content and applications, he added.

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. As a part of such efforts PTA will now hold an exclusive conference on ‘Promoting ICT Sector’ on February 25, 2010 (Thursday). This conference is being organized in view of the importance of local content and applications for future promotion of ICT industry and infrastructure.

The NL EVD International of Netherlands is ready to compensate 60 percent financing cost as a grant for starting new business ventures by Pakistani entrepreneurs in collaboration with a foreign partner.

The partners will have to arrange only 40 percent cost of the project, said Paul Shoemakers, an expert on Private Sector Investment (PSI) programme.

While giving a presentation to businessmen at Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) which was organized by ICCI in collaboration with Netherlands Embassy, he explained the general objective of the PSI programme.

He said the PSI aimed at stimulating economic growth, creating job opportunities and generating income by supporting new business ventures in Pakistan.

Paul Shoemakers said the PSI programme is open to projects in all economic sectors of Pakistan including IT and Technology adding that the PSI contribution in the investment is 60 percent with a maximum of Eur 170 million annual budget while the maximum project budget is Eur 1.5 million.

He said Pakistani entrepreneurs can submit their business plans by May 10 and August 23 this year which are the deadlines for new tenders.

He said nearly 500 private investment projects have been carried out through this scheme in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia over the last ten years.

It contributed significantly to economic growth and poverty alleviation in these continents. So there is a good chance for Pakistani entrepreneurs to stimulate business activities by availing the facility of PSI programme, he added.

Zahid Maqbool, President ICCI said Pakistani economy has suffered a lot by fighting war against militancy and terrorism to protect the interest of international community.

He said it is high time that European countries should enhance their investment in different sectors of Pakistan economy that offer lucrative returns.

He said Netherlands should also help Pakistan in energy sector as business and Industry in Pakistan are in great difficulty due to energy shortage in the country.