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PTA Publishes Coverage Maps for Cellular, Broadband and other Telecom Services: ProPakistani |  |
- PTA Publishes Coverage Maps for Cellular, Broadband and other Telecom Services
- 3rd Round of Blocking Unregistered SIMs Soon, But Complete Solution is still a Distant Dream
- Technology Triangle and Need to Get Rid of it
| PTA Publishes Coverage Maps for Cellular, Broadband and other Telecom Services Posted: 13 May 2011 06:11 AM PDT
PTA Publishes Coverage Maps for Cellular, Broadband and other Telecom Services is a post from: ProPakistani Pakistan Telecommunication Authority today announced that it has developed coverage maps for Broadband, Cellular, Fixed line and Wireless local loop services for Pakistan. Federal Secretary for Information Technology and Telecom Mr. Saeed Ahmad Khan inaugurated the application that will enable general public, telecom operators and investors, to view availability of telecom services coverage all across Pakistan. PTA says that this is a fully interactive application allowing users to zoom in and dynamically plot the coverage of telecom services in graphical format. This application gives the flexibility to select any one of the telecom service like GSM, DSL, EVDO. Similarly user can view coverage of particular operator in particular city through the coverage map. For instance, look at following map, the green dots show the cities/towns where cellular service is available. You can select the technology or an operator to narrow down your search. We have observed couple of issues with the maps, and the corresponding data, for instance have a look at following map for WiMAX coverage in Islamabad. It says that Wateen and wi-tribe are only operators operating in Islamabad, but that's not the case. Qubee is also serving its WiMAX products in Islamabad. Nevertheless, it is a good effort by PTA and service is going to help end-users at large. You can view the coverage maps by visiting this link: http://www.pta.gov.pk/digitalmaps/digitalmaps.php Related posts:
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| 3rd Round of Blocking Unregistered SIMs Soon, But Complete Solution is still a Distant Dream Posted: 12 May 2011 10:00 PM PDT
3rd Round of Blocking Unregistered SIMs Soon, But Complete Solution is still a Distant Dream is a post from: ProPakistani While we are left with only four days for SIM verification process before un-registered SIMs to get blocked on May 17th (which also happens to be the World Telecom Day), it looks cellular companies and the mobile phone users won't be able to complete cent percent verification of SIM data. From what we have noted, during interviews with various mobile company officials, they aren't confident that the issue of un-registered SIMs will get fully resolved after the practice. But everyone, be it the cellular operators, the authority or the work force, they seem to be on same page for eliminating all un-registered SIMs from their records. If everyone wants to cure the problem then what's the hurdle? Answer to this is: The verification mechanism and inaction of end user! Before we get into details, it is important to note here that we are dealing with two kind of unregistered SIMs:
Un-registered SIMs were issued during pre-789 era (before January 2009), when cellular companies bulkily sold SIMs without even getting the forms filled. These SIMs are usually registered in the name of distributors / resellers. Most of such kind of un-registered SIMs were blocked during the first and second phase of data clean-up process by PTA. PTA claims during two phases, in 2008, the campaign against unnamed and unregistered SIMs it had blocked 16.3 million unregistered SIMs. However, it did not have issued the figure as how many SIMs of which operator was blocked. Then there comes those un-registered SIMs, i.e. which are still being used by customers but are not registered to their names. Now the real trouble is to identify those SIMs which are wrongly registered or they were registered with fake IDs. Again, such kind of SIMs were mainly issued during pre-789 time, when one ID card was used to register hundreds of SIMs. This is where end-users or mobile phone subscribers need to play their role. They need to identify all the SIMs issued against their CNIC. They must get those SIMs blocked which are not in their use. How many SIMs will get Blocked on May 17th? We have spoken to officials of all cell phone companies, but they are un-clear about SIMs that may get blocked on May 17th. They are not even certain about One SIM per One CNIC rule, as hinted by the Minister Interior. By definition, all those SIMs with fake registration or those SIMs used by customers and are not in their name should get blocked. But seemingly only those SIMs are going to get blocked which would be requested by mobile phone users (through 668). If so, then estimates suggest that 6-8 million connections are going to get whipped out from the records of cellular companies. However, if the deadline of 17th May, 2011 is extended, this number of blocked SIM may increase as well to probably hit the maximum of 10-12 million mark. It merits mentioning here that around 400,000 subscribers are getting their numbers verified through 668 with their respective operators every day. Awareness Campaigns: All cellular companies have reached out to their customers through text messages, asking them to send their CNIC numbers to 668 to get their SIM ownership corrected. Telenor has gone one step ahead and is airing TVCs to make the mobile phone users realize their responsibility of registering their SIMs. We have heard that Ufone is incentivizing customers with Android handsets if they verify their connections. Following is one one such SMS sent to a ProPakistani reader:
If everyone wants to cure the problem then what's the hurdle? As mentioned above, there are two issue, The mechanism of eliminating unregistered SIMs and the end user! Let's first discuss the end user. A common mobile phone user is apparently not very serious about registering his/her SIM. This can be because of our irresponsible nature, lack of awareness or otherwise non-availability of service centers in their respective towns/cities. You may know that not every city is equipped with cellular companies' service centers. In this situation, a customer may not opt to get his/her SIM data verified for which he has to travel 100 plus kilometers, especially when he is not responsible for the wrongdoings. It wasn’t him/her who sold SIMs in his/her CNIC in first place. Now cellular companies want the end users to play their role in correcting the data, however, we all know it is unrealistic to believe that 105 million SIMs will get corrected through this approach. To just give you an example, through sources we have learned that SIMs of our political leaders are not in their name too. For instance, Minister Interior, Rahman Malik's one number that he uses is not in his name. Similarly, Information Minister Firdos Ashiq Awan and Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar and Kashmir Affair Minister Manzoor Wattu's cell phone numbers are not issued to their names. According to sources, Rahman Malik's this one particular number is registered to Ministry Interior, while Firdos Ashiq Awan's number is registered in the name of Ministry of Population, while she is now information minister. It merits mentioning here that PTA had issued an SOP in July 2010 for corporate customers, to include individual details as well while issuing a number to corporations/ government / non-government entities – according to which, up-mentioned ministers need to update their information with cellular companies in order to comply with PTA rules. This depicts the nature of problem we are dealing with. A significant number of mobile phone users won't bother to go to service centers to get their data corrected. The Ultimate Solution: This is where we need to think of a better way out to completely eliminate the issue of unregistered SIMs, once and for all I have previously proposed too, in fact back in 2009, to re-register every SIM, and block those which aren't registered during given a time frame. This is the only way to get the data corrected for each and every SIM. PTA needs to sit with cellular operators, consultants and experts to devise a strategy to how to re-register each and every SIM. PTA can in fact hire ICT companies to automate the whole process – let me define a prototype of such an automated system which will re-register SIMs without much of human-involvement: Case One: Your SIM is registered in your name, and you want to re-register Mobile phone users, who have SIMs registered in their name can be asked to send their CNICs to a short code, for instance, ask them to send their CNICs to 5555. In response, system can ask 2-3 questions from the mobile phone users, which they can reply via SMS through same short code. System should be capable of recognizing the answers, and if answered well, the SIM would get re-registered to the user it already belonged to, that too without visiting a service center or involving any human. Case two: Your SIM isn't registered in your name, or you were unable to answer the questions asked by system: In this case, mobile phone user should go to nearest service center, fill the form, present his/her CNIC, thumb impression and get the SIM re-registered. PTA can run this campaign for one whole year maybe, and at the deadline – all un-registered SIMs can be blocked. Those customers having multiple SIMs can repeat the process for all the SIMs they are using. Benefits:
Of course, the above mentioned prototype can be bettered in so many ways. Is 668 a Reliable Service? Not really, if you really need to know the exact number of SIMs issued against your CNIC, then visit service center of all operators. We have seen in past, observed lately too, that 668 data can be out-dated and may not communicate you the exact number of SIMs issued against your CNIC. Crux: Officials of all cellular companies and the PTA know that these "Block Unregistered SIMs" campaigns are just nothing more than seasonal trends, which will belittle in just couple of months. However, after a quarter or two, Rahman Malik may issue another statement of blocking all un-registered SIMs, and these mobile operators will have to block another 5-10 million SIMs. But that's not the solution, this is not how PTA should kill the issue by firing in the air. The time has become when our regulator should sit with operators to devise a permanent, doable and efficient solution to eliminate the problem – after all it's PTA and cellular companies who are the main culprits. So cellular companies, PTA, and mobile phone users need to be responsible here, and play their core role for the betterment of the country. Related posts:
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| Technology Triangle and Need to Get Rid of it Posted: 12 May 2011 09:55 PM PDT
Technology Triangle and Need to Get Rid of it is a post from: ProPakistani In this era of technology our way of living has changed altogether. We are much advanced, more sophisticated and quicker to do our work. Every other day we get to know some new invention or some new products launched in tech world. This is not going to get over as the competition and our demands are growing. Life has become robotic. We think about technology, we work on technology and we live on technology. In fact its hard to live a life without technological products. Though technology has made certain good impacts on our lives but as it has been said by someone wise: Excess of every thing is bad Using something in limit is always good but when one uses it beyond the limits then it may start creating issues and that's what is happening with us right now. We are moving in a technological triangle most of the time especially the young generation. Our mornings start with updating "Good Morning" status on Facebook and sending text messages to bulk of friends. Our evenings are spent in front of televisions and our nights in front of laptop and internet. In schools, colleges, universities most of us are busy talking or texting on phones and even during the lectures. Same is going on in offices. If one gets a chance to use internet anywhere the first thing he/she will be doing is to log-in on Facebook. All these things not only hurt our productivity but also put a question mark on our social values. If one gets free from texting or talking from cell phone then he/she switches on television and after that may come the laptop. On average we spend 80% of our time with these technology oriented gadgets. Our socialization is becoming less. We don't have knowledge about our neighbors and colleagues. We like to ask how one is feeling through Facebook or through texting but don't like to walk to that person for a single minute. We don't have time to spend with our family but we do have time to talk with our girl friends. We don't have time to offer prayer but we do have time to watch television. We don't have time read a book but we do have time to use Facebook. As a result of all this we are getting away from our core social values, in fact we are becoming robots. The need of the hour is to bring a balance in our life. We should use all these things but we should take time out to get to do our socializing, sports and spend time with family and friends. We should give ample time to all the things. In this way we will be able to get more positive results and we will be more successful in our lives. Related posts:
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