KARACHI: The number of cellphone subscribers crossed 18 million mark last month leaving behind the authorities’ forecast, which predicted 16 million mobile phone users by December 2005.

The figures compiled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority suggest that by October 2005 cellular density in the country stood at 11.95 compared with 10.98 registered in September 2005.

“The figures show that the country had some 18.4 million cellular subscribers by October 2005,” said a PTA official. “In absolute terms, the figures are 18,400,233 with a growth rate of 18.5 percent compared with September 2005.”

He said the PTA had not released companies’ share by October 2005 as the regulator had decided to issue operators’ subscribers base on quarterly basis.

The cellular subscriber base has registered a phenomenal jump during the past one and a half years and has registered a 154.26 percent growth during the previous fiscal compared with 2003-04.

The operators believe with cheap calls on top of falling handset costs, demand for mobile phones is rising rapidly in the country, as though 12 in 100 now own a mobile phone connection compared with five in India – the world’s fifth-largest telecom market.

The PTA official said by the first quarter of the current fiscal Mobilink was leading the market share with 9.01 million subscribers across the country followed by Ufone – a sister concern of the Pakistan Telecommunica-tion Company– with 3.83 million customers.

“Since the arrival of two new operators earlier this year the competition grew at much faster pace and cellular subscriber registered an almost 150 percent increase during 2004-05,” said the official.

The PTA in April 2004 awarded two cellular licences to Norwegian Telenor and the UAE-based Al Warid at $291 million each. The two foreign companies, which launched services early this year, have registered rapidly grown subscriber base during the past six months. “By September 2005 Al Warid was serving 1.50 million users and Telenor was being used by 1.20 million people across the country,” said the PTA official, showing quarterly compiled companies’ share.

Similarly, he said Paktel, which offered both GSM (global system for mobile communications) and AMPS (advanced mobile phone system) services, enjoyed a total of 954,528 subscribers by September 2005.

“Instaphone, which offers a comparatively older technology of AMPS, had the least number of 440,159 customers by September 2005,” added the PTA official.

The latest figures have left the PTA predictions well behind, which predicted more than 16 million mobile phone subscribers by December 2005, but the regulators suggested its estimates could prove ineffective due to rising popularity of cellular service.

“With subscriber base increasing every day and mobile penetration increasing every month, the mobile cellular sector of Pakistan is likely to cross all estimates,” said the PTA annual report.

“Timely launch of two new cellular companies, expansion of network by a leading operator on monthly basis, renewal of an expiring licence, expansion in networks, reduced taxes and handset prices are all right ingredients for best possible growth pattern any mobile sector can have.”

The country’s cellular subscribers growth has also inspired the international bodies, which paint an impressive picture of Pakistan’s telecom scene.

“Pakistan’s mobile telecommunications growth continues at an astonishing pace,” said a GSM Association report issued recently. “With six competitors in the market, declining prices, increasing affordability and the next round of competition focusing on price, quality, and enhanced services, Pakistan will continue to be among the fastest growing markets in the world in the next several years.”

Senior executives are often burdened by loads of emails waiting to be decided and executed. It wastes time, energies and resources of a company. They may get together on several corporate lunches just to decide upon a raw material provider.

The reason could be an unclear decision making rights or a poorly defined responsibilities. People normally don’t know about their limits of decision taking rights.

A “decision inventory” is normally used to simplify such situations. Every one has a well defined authority smoothly run organizational operations. But the decision inventory also has a limitation of being static in a dynamic environment. Every decision could not be categorized. A sudden addition in the product line or a natural disaster could put you in a difficult situation.

The method of making clusters for decisions is resulting in a favorable output. While running a decision inventory, some clusters should also be made to cover unforeseen situations. For example: If a decision about moving a local office does not require involvement of the corporate/headquarter. The decision should be taken with in a regional authority and be executed without involving the head office. Same is the case with the head office. A merger or an international partnership should not involve the regional or local offices.

Dividing decisions in a broader perspective can help smoother operational flow of any organization.

The UK’s home broadband market is being shaken up at the moment, with Carphone Warehouse (our leading mobile phone retailer) offering free broadband bundled with its TalkTalk landline phone service. Now, T-Mobile has waded in by threatening to replace the landline altogether – both for voice calls and broadband data services.

T-Mobile’s plans involve using HSDPA to ramp up the data transfer rates of its 3G service from the current 384kbps to 1.8Mbps in 2006, and then onto 20Mbps by 2010. Better still, the service is completely open, and is offered at a flat rate of just £8.50 ($15) per month for unlimited use.

Who needs a landline?

T-Mobile have noticed that younger users of phones rely so heavily on their mobiles, they rarely use landlines, except for high speed data access via broadband. Sensing a change in consumer behaviour, T-Mobile are positioning themselves to take advantage of the increasing number of households that are dispensing with landlines altogether. With HSDPA, 3G speeds are more than a match for home broadband connections, and at just £8.50 per month, the total service is actually cheaper than the combined land-line voice and broadband rate charged by the telcos. With this new service, there’s no reason to keep a landline, even for high speed data access.
Mobile Networks as Bit Pipes

This could be the sea-change that’s necessary for mobile services finally to take off. T-Mobile has seen the light, and recognized that mobile network operators are just bit pipes – they’re not content providers, and can’t get away with charging absurd sums for poor content.

Walled Gardens Kill content

Mobile operators’ portals and walled-garden Internet access are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and not before time. Despite spending £22.5 billion in the UK alone for high speed 3G data rates, the operators’ practice of restricting the content users can access has led to just 10% of UK mobile phone users downloading content of any sort. In response to user demand, the handset manufacturers are circumventing these limitations by offering WiFi on their latest models, letting users use their home broadband connection to access whatever content they wish without the extortionate charges imposed by the operators. With T-Mobile’s latest plans, this is no longer necessary, as data charges over their mobile network could be significantly cheaper than over a home broadband connection.

Changing industry landscape

An intriguing game of chess is clearly going on between the mobile operators, land line operators, broadband ISPs, cable companies and even mobile phone retailers. Who wins is currently anyone’s guess, but the telephony landscape is changing beyond recognition, and with it, the services and content we can expect. About time, too!

 Via: mobilementalism

Fujitsu have announced a completely new barcode that’s invisible to the naked eye, but which can be read by mobile phones. The new barcode can encode info such as a URL, which can be decoded by the mobile phone, enabling web-based content to be downloaded onto the phone. As the picture shows, the idea is to get more information about a product simply by waving a mobile phone over it, or over related publicity material.

via: Mobilementlism

This makes Indonesia the third Southeast Asian nation, after Singapore and Malaysia, to launch 3G services commercially.

XL is the country’s second 3G operator after PT Telkomsel, the biggest GSM operator, which launched a similar service last month. PT Indosat, the country’s second-biggest operator, reported that it will offer commercial 3G in November.

“XL presents XL3G to the people of Indonesia as proof of our commitment to become the preferred telecommunications provider in the country and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of XL,” stated Hasnul Suhaimi, president director of XL.

XL3G, which passed the Goverment’s Operational Feasibility Test (ULO) on September 12 and 14, will initially be introduced in six Indonesian cities: Jakarta, Medan, Batam, Bandung, Surabaya and Denpasar. All prepaid’s Bebas and postpaid’s Xplor users in those cities have been able to trial several XL3G applications since September 18 free of charge.

The operator prepares free 10,000 XL3G SIM cards at selected XL Centers, available to the first 10,000 customers who visit any of the XL3G kiosk at the 10 XL Centers. The rest of the customers can get the card by paying Rp20,000 (about US$2).

XL’s customers can access 3G services while roaming in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Australia by selecting XL’s 3G international roaming partner’s network–Celcom (Malaysia), M1 (Singapore), Telstra (Australia) and Hong Kong CSL (Hong Kong). XL’s other 3G international roaming partner operators such as SmarTone (Hong Kong), Hutchison 3G (Australia) and Hutchison 3G (Hong Kong) will be launched next month.

For data access, XL provides about 100 HSDPA hotspots in Jakarta and other cities. That’s why the operator has declared that it is the first with the widest and fastest 3G network in Indonesia.

According to Suhaimi, the total invesment for XL3G is about US$100 million. “XL3G will bring us to experience the world of XL Life Unlimitted: A world of high-speed, reliable mobile communication,” he added.

Source

But while service providers race to accelerate the deployment of IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) solutions in turn to offer not just VoIP but more importantly video services (IPTV), incumbent operators (which have led the so-called “Triple Play” charge) have stepped up the pressure to remove regulatory hurdles – a point that didn’t escape Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg who used his opening keynote as an opportunity to advance the cause.

“We need to update the telecom laws for the 21st century, particularly those related to broadband services. And we need to simplify and reform the franchising process that is acting as a barrier to video competition,” Seidenberg said.

IMS, which was originally defined by the 3 rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) governing body for the cellular market around the world, is a modular standards-based platform that uses Internet protocol and Session initiation protocol (SIP) to enhance service offerings. And with vendors the size of IBM backing the technology, it certainly has proven its relevance to the telecom world.

“Every Tier 1 service provider in fixed and wireless networks will announce SIP-based services running over IMS in the next six to twelve months. Any who don’t will be like airlines that missed out on the jet engine,” Ian Cox, analyst at ABI Research, recently wrote in a research report.

At the kickoff of Supercomm on Tuesday, vendors like IBM, which is exhibiting with as many as eight partners like NexTone, AudioCodes, Brooktrout and Ubiquity on the show floor, and Sonus Networks have announced IMS solutions – each on their own respective architecture.

Sonus IMS solution is centered around its Sonus IMX Application Platform, a web-based multimedia environment that enables wireline and wireless service providers to rapidly develop, integrate, launch, and manage enhanced telecommunication applications and services. It also includes its existing products: the GSX family, PSX, SGX, ASX and Insight system.

Meanwhile, IBM’s IMS solution is centered around SuSE’s carrier-grade Linux and enhancements to the IBM blade family of servers that were unveiled Tuesday. Using middleware like Motorola’s NetPlane Core Services software or embedded solutions like SBS Technologies for applications development, service providers are looking for new business by tapping into revenue sources that were traditionally reserved for cable operators.

“We’re seeing in the marketplace a lot of activity driven by the need for new services for revenue. IPTV is a great example of that,” Jim Pertzborn, vice president in the telecommunications group of IBM’s Systems division.

But for service providers to take advantage of all of the scalable, end-to-end solution on display at Supercomm to manage and deliver IPTV services, public policy-makers must take a more hands-off, “light touch” approach, according to executives at SBC and Verizon.

“There remains a real disconnect between the broadband market and broadband policy,” said Verizon Executive Vice President Thomas J. Tauke. “The broadband market is global, while broadband policy is still local. The broadband market is converging, while broadband policy is still in silos. And the broadband market is competitive, while broadband policy is still stagnant.”

At issue are the local franchise agreements that operators (like cable) are required to obtain from individual municipalities around the nation to offer video services to their constituents. And while the Texas state legislature recently abandoned an effort to deregulate, there are signs that the persistent lobbying by telcos is making some headway.

According to published reports, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens believes telephone companies like SBC deserve relief the franchising rules.

writer: ROBERT LIU

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According the the manual, the Nokia Podcast Application supports, over the air downloads via WCDMA/GPRS or WLAN (which they recommend since it is both faster and you won’t be charged for the download), discovery of Podcasts via both search and a directory function, listening to the podcasts (of course!), and sharing of podcasts via bluetooth and MMS which I think is not only a great idea but also demonstrates how functionality that exists in the phone but not an iPod can give the former a real advantage in terms of overall utility and performance.

The application is free to download as are virtually all podcasts, the only cost may be for data if you don’t have un unlimited plan. I’ll be installing this on my phone straight away and will provide an update to this post if I find anything interesting or particularly good or bad that bears mention.

Via: Mobilecrunch

Recent reports of the lower than expected uptake of mobile phone related value-added services apparently won’t discourage service providers from investing in additional broadband infrastructure. New research has uncovered incremental capital expenditure (CAPEX) by the major mobile operators, along with their strategies for the future.

In 2006, GSM is the dominant cellular technology, but by 2012, WCDMA will receive the highest CAPEX investment by mobile operators, according to a study from ABI Research. By 2012, worldwide mobile CAPEX will exceed $150 billion.

“Mobile operators’ attitudes towards CAPEX have changed over the past two or three years,” says mobile wireless research analyst Shailendra Pandey. “They are clearly becoming more focused on an early return on their investments.”

Greater emphasis on data services is resulting in increased investment in servers and platforms outside the range of traditional wireless equipment. In developed markets there is now more focus on making investments that will improve in-building coverage, and the rollout of advanced data services such as mobile TV and mobile broadband.

To offer advanced data and content services with improved delivery and reduced network costs, mobile operators will have to invest in more leased capacity, upgrade to microwave technologies, and add fiber links where microwave technologies have been exhausted, in an effort to boost their networks’ backhaul capacity. Operators will also have to deploy advanced switching technology in the backhaul network, to improve traffic flow and maximize the performance of the backhaul infrastructure.

In 2005, China Mobile’s CAPEX in China was $8.86 billion, more than Vodafone’s global total CAPEX ($8.74 billion), which is remarkable considering the high value of CAPEX spent per-subscriber and per service revenue dollar generated.

In North America, Cingular’s CAPEX investment in 2005 was $7.475 billion, 116 percent more than in 2004. This was due to Cingular’s investments in building out its WCDMA network.

“ABI Research expects that investment in technologies supporting HSDPA, mobile TV, and mobile broadband services will continue to expand in the coming years,” says Pandey. “Also, by 2007, a good number of mobile operators will start rolling out IMS (IP multimedia subsystems), enabling them to rapidly deploy and launch enhanced revenue-generating multimedia services.”

Source

1. Keep track of elderly members of your family, so that they don?t wander off alone.

2. Get emergency road side assistance at a touch of a button from your vehicle, so you can get help exactly where and when you need it.

3. Plan a road trip around interesting points of interests, landmarks, campsites, diners, etc, and hear fewer “Are we there yets?”- and of course get the most out of that expensive gas.

4. Find lost pets easily using collars with built-in GPS, better than running around in your pajamas hollering like a maniac.

5. Feel safer with cellular phone 911 calls, so emergency personnel can pinpoint your location once you make an emergency call. Please double check your carrier service to see that it has GPS features and get a primer on how it works if possible.

6. Know where your children are using services from companies like uLocate Communications.

7. Keep a visual journal and bookmark collection of your favorite hot spots, sceneries, and points of interests, that may not be listed in any travel guide (You can create your own mini travel guides and memories).

8. When going on a vacation, feel free to separate from group for a while to venture on your own based on your own interests and find them later on with your GPS enabled device- even in an unfamiliar place.

9. Get to your interview, or any important time sensitive destination or engagement, faster by finding shortcuts and correct directions.

10. Track your luggage, laptops, and anything of importance while traveling.

11. Track and find family, friends in a crowded concert, graduation, or any social gathering.

12. Find a good Italian restaurant near your movie theatre on the fly.

The GPS function right now is limited by the relatively bad connection to the satellite feeds when we are indoors in buildings, homes, or behind anything that could obstruct the GPS connection. However with the investment and development in a new satellite network called Galileo which should be completed in the near future, these problems should be eliminated drastically.

Despite the problems above , GPS still offers a world of benefits as mentioned earlier, and with any technology, it will only get better.

In addition to more practical usage applications, GPS will make a great educational and fun gift for your loved one?s and friends as well. Consider just two of the many creative and educational uses of GPS:

1. Stay physically active and fit by playing RayGun! A locational based cell phone game based on GPS technology.

2. Become more cultured, make global friends, and learn about the world playing GeoCache, a global GPS based treasure hunt.

With many affordable feature-rich models to satisfy anyone?s preferences and budgets, now is as good a time as any to learn more about GPS technologies, which are surely to become more assimilated into the mainstream within the decade. One day we will take these things for granted just like we do now for the internet and cell phones. The key is to dive in, without paralyzing yourself with the overwhelming array of choices in the GPS market, and enjoying some truly amazing technology.

About The Author
Simon Wyryzowski is a GPS enthusiast and regular contributor to GPSZoom.com. For even more practical, creative, and common uses including GPS tracking services for people, please visit http://www.gpszoom.com/.

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What this means exactly, we’re not sure. But the GSM broadcasting could mean you’re getting a stronger signal at home—like from a GSM repeater—and the VoIP is VoIP through the T-Mobile system. Most likely a flat rate for $X a month, or using up your minutes. All conjecture at this point until we receive more details after they roll out the test on August 11th.

They’re only signing up customers over email and having them reply via email. People who call up customer service or go to T-Mobile stores cannot sign up. Read the PDF for more details. – Jason Chen

source: Gizmodo