Editor’s Blog (IT Insight)

It was revealed by Pakistan’s Prime Minister - Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani - yesterday that  teledensity in the country had increased to 58 percent of the population, which was the highest in South Asia. This sounds really good, but does it also mean we have highest QoS in the region? Not really!

No doubt, Pakistan remained one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world where in the last year mobile industry invested close to $3 billion of total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) coming into the country. But the Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring and enforcement needs a lot to be done.

Pakistan’s Telecom Authority (PTA) had to face severe criticism in recent past over unidentified SIM cards which are avilable throughout the country. As these SIMS can be used for any kind of illegal activity, analysts believe it is the fault of PTA as it could have imparted a strict policy since it issued cellular licenses.

I must say I’m impressed by PTCL’s quick service in two latest offerings by them:

1. Broadband Pakistan
2. IPTV service (which is not yet launched fully)

Maybe it is because I live in Islamabad, but for some reason PTCL is acting really fast. Some say that is because of heated competition in the market. Gone are the days when we had to get a ’safarish’ (reference) of a VIP to get even a phone line installed in our homes. PTCL now gives many services on just a phone call after Etisalat acquired it and the market became full of telcos.

Imagine! I was just browsing PTCL’s website and came across this new broadband service by them, I clicked on signup form and just filled it up to see what happens next. Here we go, I got a message that I will be called for this and I thought “Yeah rite! ;)”. To my surprise, I got a call next day at around 10:00am, asking me “Sir, should we come to install DSL at your home?”. I was like what? Are you really from PTCL? I told them I’m already using another ISP for DSL, they helped me out in getting myself unscubscribed from the other ISP and I was using PTCL’s broadband the same evening.

The latest surprise came to me when I got a call froma lady saying “Sir, I’m calling from PTCL. We’re offering IPTV for free to our valued DSL customers. IPTV is this.. that.. blah blah!” I was like “Hey! I’m interested, now plz stop! and tell me what to do next?”. She said “Our engineers will come to your place and give you free equipment and you will be able to use our IPTV service FREE for 2 months”. And here they were, IPTV is now here in my room and its working excellent.