The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) have entered into a landmark agreement at Islamabad for the provisioning of 10 Gigabit Premium Internet Bandwidth Connectivity. This is the largest Internet Backbone Connectivity ever acquired by any organization in Pakistan.

PTCL is the main provider of premium internet bandwidth to the HEC who in turn provides the internet services to the universities alongwith other IP facilities including video conferencing, digital libraries and access to International Education & Research Networks.

The contract is an integral component of Pakistan Education & Research Network-2 (PERN-2) Project which was initiated by HEC to provide high speed connectivity to the universities and institutes of higher learning across the country, forming the national research and education network of Pakistan. PERN2 also provides internet access to the students and research scholars of the universities in Pakistan through state of the art access technologies.

On the occasion, Dr. Sohail Naqvi, Executive Director of HEC said “The PERN-2 project upon completion will bring HEC at par with any international organization and will give access to the internet cloud, world wide education & research networks, digital libraries within/outside Pakistan, distance learning/video conferencing, unified communication boosting the sharing of knowledge with international students, scholars and knowledge resources”.Walid Irhaid, President and CEO, PTCL, added that “PTCL has offered this premium IP transit facility keeping in view of its corporate social responsibilities to the education sector of the country. PTCL is the only service provider in Pakistan having the capability to provide the required volume of internet bandwidth because of its partnerships in multiple international submarine cables’, its robust countrywide transmission network and state of the art IP infrastructure.”

On this occasion HEC & PTCL expressed desire for expanded future co-operation in the best interest of the country and its positive impact on the education & social sectors of Pakistan.

Global mobile data traffic surpassed voice during December of 2009, after growing 280 per cent during each of the last two years. The total data traffic on mobiles, across the world, exceeded an exabyte for the first time in 2009. According to forecasts, global mobile data traffic is to double annually over the next five years. According to Ericsson’s findings and Sharma Consulting study:

• Total mobile data traffic, which includes SMS text messaging, also topped mobile voice traffic in the United States last year for the first time.

• An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes. Chetan Sharma, who counts AT&T and China Mobile as clients, says North America and Western Europe’s mobile data markets are growing so rapidly they each should exceed an exabyte in 2010.

• Sharma expects 2010 to be the first year that mobile broadband connections would exceed fixed broadband connections globally.

• Sharma said that overall telecom revenues stayed flat last year, largely due to the worldwide recession. The good news is that, unlike in many other industries, they didn’t decline.

• The total number of app downloads hit $7 billion; bringing in $4.1 billion in revenues.

• Asia had the largest percentage of downloads, but North Americans accounted for more than 50% of the app revenue.

• Text messaging still accounts for the majority of data traffic but soon its supremacy will be challenged by music, television and video streaming, voice navigation, games, web surfing and other things.

• In 2009, traffic on 3G networks also surpassed that of 2G networks.

• Some 400 million mobile broadband subscriptions now generating more data traffic than the voice traffic from the total 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions around the world.

• Social networking sites on mobile devices and mobile broadband-based PCs now account for a large percentage of mobile data traffic.

• Over 200 mobile operators in 60 countries are deploying and promoting Facebook mobile products, with over 100 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• 80% of mobile broadband users demand anytime, anywhere access.

• It also finds that as mobile data traffic increases, the mobile broadband connection is becoming as personal as the mobile phone.

• The top ten nations by overall revenues were: U.S., China, Japan, France, Italy, UK, Germany, Brazil, Spain and India.

• By data revenues alone the top ten were: U.S. Japan, China, U.K., Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Spain and Korea.

• The top 10 nations in terms of the number of mobile subscriptions are China, India, U.S., Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Italy.

• The only mobile companies worldwide that are bringing in $50 million or more in revenues are China Mobile, Vodafone, AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless.

The computer systems of scores of Indian embassies, military establishments and corporate bodies, as well as the email account of the Dalai Lama, were hacked by a Chinese cyber spy ring as reported by Hindustan Times.

Hundreds of documents, including classified files, were stolen, says a Canadian cyber security team that monitored the ring — the Shadow Network — for eight months.

The Shadow Network focused on India, especially its military. The Canadians, in effect, hacked the hackers and saw many documents themselves. 

“We snuck behind the backs of the attackers and picked their pockets,” team member Ronald Deibert told NYT.

The Chinese hackers stole foreign ministry reports on India’s policy in West Africa, Russia and West Asia. They got National Security Council secretariat assessments of security situations in Assam, Nagaland, Tripura and Manipur as well as the Maoist problem.

The penetration of India’s defence establishments was remarkable. Three air force bases, two military colleges and an array of military institutes like the Army Institute of Technology, Pune, were broken into.

The Canadian team saw the hackers access over 300 military documents.

The hackers seemed interested in any defence information they could find: from sensitive issues like live fire exercises and Project Shakti — the army’s artillery command system — to more innocuous material like personnel files.

“This is a very serious, broad spectrum assault,” said strategic technology expert Ajay Lele, whose own agency, the Institute for Defence and Security Analysis (IDSA), was robbed of 180 documents.

The Shadow Network broke into computers of analysts and stole reports on India’s missile systems. It hacked those of academics and journalists for work on Kashmir. Data was also stolen from firms like Tata and DLF. The Canadians informed

Indian intelligence on March 24 and were instructed on how to dispose of the classified data.

The ring is believed to be based in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province. The cybersleuths, based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, avoided saying this was government-approved but did say it was “possible”.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said: “We have from time to time heard of this kind of news. I don’t know the purpose to stir up these issues.”

However, the Indian security establishment has little doubt the Shadow Network is cast by Beijing. Says K. Santhanam, former IDSA head: “These rings are normally consortia in which Chinese academia, intelligence and military work together.”

Indian officials said the foreign ministry server was breached last year and a security audit “traced the Internet protocol addresses left in the wake of the hacking back to mainland China”. The air force too reported an officer’s account being hacked last month and the Net trail led back to China.

The hackers had a clear India focus, says the report. Of 130 Net protocol addresses compromised, 62 were from India.

Pakistan’s telecoms market will have to consolidate before the government can even consider a planned push into third-generation technology, according to the head of the only European operator in the country.

Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms group, said that there was not enough profit per phone user to justify having five mobile groups in Pakistan and operators would have to consider mergers or acquisitions in order to see significant growth.

Jon Eddy Abdullah, Telenor Pakistan’s chief executive, told the Financial Times: “Most markets are [divided between] three players. Three seems a very good number. Five is too many.”

Telenor entered Pakistan five years ago and is the second largest cellular phone operator after Mobilink, a subsidiary of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom . Pakistan’s other operators are Ufone, Warid Telecom and Zong.

Mr Abdullah refused to comment on speculation that Telenor would seek to buy out one of its smaller competitors in Pakistan. However, he conceded that consolidation would “drive every shareholder to talk to everyone else.”

Pakistan is part of broader expansion by Telenor across central and southern Asia, including operations in India, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

Asia accounted for 26 per cent of revenues in 2008, with the rest coming from eastern and central Europe and the Nordic region.

Much of Telenor’s recent focus has been on its 67.3 per cent investment in Unitech Wireless of India . But the group also sees big potential in Pakistan, which has seen a phenomenal increase in the number of mobile phone users over the past decade.

According to statistics compiled by Pakistan Telecom Authority, the main telecoms regulator, there are about 95m subscribers in a country with a total population of 180m.

Mobile phone services are available across 90 per cent of the country.

The Pakistan government has said it is committed to moving from 2G to 3G mobile phone technology though it is yet to even outline a time frame for when that might happen.

Mr Abdullah said that the government would need to offer existing operators some incentives to move towards 3G.

The BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 is surely to take the industry by storm with its newest features which have never been offered before. It is the lowest priced new generation BlackBerry in the world, being offered for just Rs. 25,000/- The Gemini (Curve™ 8520) is the most innovative and competitively priced handset within the BlackBerry family which has been designed to satisfy the common man’s communication needs & to help them stay in touch while on the move. At the end of this divine month of Ramadan, BlackBerry is no more a dream, it is a reality. It is the perfect EID gift from Ufone, for anyone who desires mobility, convenience and confidence to move among the corporate brass.

Ufone has been among the leading carriers in refining user experience in co-ordination with Research in Motion for the new BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smart phone.

The sleek and shiny BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smart phone is jam packed with the coolest features like high resolution display, dedicated media keys, smooth track pad navigation, social networking, immediate iTunes and Macintosh compatibility. It also comes with a 2.0 Megapixel camera/camcorder and is Wi-Fi enabled.

Speaking about this exciting new handheld, Mr. Taimur Faiz Cheema, Head of VAS Ufone said, “This sleek and modern solution from BlackBerry will surely attract every Pakistani customer who has an interest in staying in touch while on the move. This unique smart phone delivers an amazing blend of affordability, functionality, performance, usability and design – making it an ideal choice for both professionals and power users in Pakistan.