March April 08 Final

Telecom: Leading Telecom News Magazine

CONTENTS March, April 2008

Cover Story: 48 Mr. Tom Slone, who is involved in the fraudulent activities and disgracing not only Mr. Farukh Aslam (a share holder of TouchStone) but Pakistan's image.

Why High Call Rates to Muslim Countries? At War with Youtube? Mobilink Brings the Beauty KHL gets Delivery Rights of Chinese Group Telenor's Customer Wins a Crore Abu Dhabi Group Invests in Georgia Rural Punjab Remains Behind PTCL Broadband Entertainment Portal PTCL Reports Net loss of Rs 9.54 bn A Humble Tribute to (Late) Bader ul Islam ZRG Represents Pakistan Mobile Social Networking Why Slowest Subscriber Growth? Nanoparticles Could Improve Mobile Phone Is There Anyone Listening? Can Apple Patent the Pinch? Will Cell Phones Save Books?

10 12 14 16 17 18 20 24 25 26 28 30 45 46 77 79 83

Cover Story: TouchStone Issue Threat for Investors… Disgrace for Pakistan

48

IT: Online Hobbies Computer Memory Vulnerable to Hacking Goodbye to Early Web Icon Using Technology in Teaching & Learning EU Extends Net Safety Programme Solution to IT Infrastructure Problems Intel Announces Brand for Processor

44 71 73 81 85 87 88

Events: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008 CeBit is Marvelous Buzz at Barcelona

22 36 40

Informative: Coming Mobile Current Mobile Mobile Review Motorola Rolls Out First ROKR for the Car

Abu Dhabi Group Invests in Georgia | 18

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Buzz at Barcelona | 16

At War With Youtoube PTCL Broadband 12 Entertainment Portal | 24

52 54 60 69

Briefs: National International

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008

92 96

| 22

Historic Move By PTCL PTCL has made some interesting moves that the amazing community at Telecom Grid Pakistan has been discussing. PTCL announced very competitive tariff for broadband internet facilities for its customers, with effect from March 1, 2008. The existing package of 256Kbps will not be offered to new customers. Existing 256Kbps packages customers will be upgraded to 512Kbps package, 512Kbps to 1Mbps and customers of 1Mbps will be upgraded to 2Mbps. In our experience with PTCL Broadband, if you can choose to look past the poor customer service and lack of support for small businesses (static IPs etc.) the actual service quality is pretty good. Added to that a good price point and this should be a very good choice for people whose phone lines can support 2mbps connections etc. Now they've announced the launch of a Broadband Entertainment Portal which gives access to music, movies, sports and more free of cost to PTCL Broadband subscribers. PTCL Broadband Pakistan is now offering incredibly cost effective, constantly available internet access as the internet access speed for existing subscribers has been doubled while they are allowed unlimited downloads for the same amount that they were previously paying. New subscribers will also be required to pay the new tariff while the modem and DSL installation is completely free. It seems like the company is picking up. PTCL is now the leader in consumer broadband in Pakistan, leading the country into 21st century. PTCL is aware of the fact that the customers need high speed and large download capacity to fully experience the Broadband Portal - the movies and music, sports coverage and religious material. Thus, the Broadband Pakistan packages have been upgraded for the benefit of all existing and new subscribers. But there is still a dire need as for as customer care is concerned. PTCL must take this issue seriously as it is important to keep loyal the customers with the company.

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Zubair Ahmed Kasuri

Editor-in-Chief

M. H. Khalid

Editor

Usman Yaqoob

Marketing Executive (Lhr.)

M. Farooq Malik

Marketing Executive (Lhr.)

Rashid Hussain Mughal

Marketing Executive (Khi.)

M. Naeem Mughal

Designer

Aamir Attaa

Incharge Research Wing

Azhar Javed

Production Manager

Zubair Ahmed Kasuri Publisher of "FLARE" Leading Telecom Magazine Printed it from Akkaz Printers Shama Plaza Lahore and Published from 105 B, Gulberg II, Lahore. Lahore Office:

Ph: 042-5750732

Islamabad Office:

Phone: + 92-51-2890054 - Fax:

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Phone: + 92-21-2275215 - Fax:

+ 92-21-2275216

E-mail:

[email protected]

Registration No:

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Price:

250/-

(Vol. 4

Issue: 6)

Well Done, PTCL

China Mobile New Campaign

It seems PTCL has a package of its own. I believe the charges of shifting one's telephone were quite nominal. However, I was mistaken. Recently I had to shift homes within the same neighbourhood in fact and thought that transferring the telephone connection would be a straightforward affair: fill out a form, deposit it at the exchange and hope to get the transfer done within a reasonable period of time. I was wrong. The lineman flatly told me it would "take Rs 2,500" to do the needful and that try as I may nothing else would work. He was right after waiting for an inordinately wrong period of time I had to dish out the money. The phone was transferred by the next day. Truly a great 'pacakge' for the people Well done, PTCL.

China mobile has launched its new campaign and it is good to see new investment in the country. I want to say that nothing is perfect in this world and every thing has a room for improvement. I am of the opinion that at the time of election the last thing people care about is a new cellular company entrance, it was a great risk that company had taken but received tremendous response, the reason being readership and viewer ship increases during crucial days. To run the campaign during these days might be risky but again campaign has to be very incomparable in order to divert the attention from political situation and it was incomparable specially Print. Believe me not only people from Advertising and Marketing but from every field were talking about this Ad from the day of election till now. Think why? Ad man or a Marketer almost gives attention to the aesthetics of the Ad, not normal person...I would say.

A subscriber, Karachi

You Tube Ban Blocking YouTube.com was a ridiculous decision on the part of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Denying the access to popular website to the whole nation because it had a few unwanted video clips is simply illogical. In other countries, such unreasonable acts could not be even bought of. Being a huge repository of video clips, YouTube.com must be accessible to the people. Raziq Hussain, Wah

Unreasonable Ban It is always interesting to hear about the new kind of bans the government imposes whenever confronted with difficult problems. In the recent past, the government banned different media outlets and imposed Section 144 to avert lawyers' procession and civil society congregations. More recently the Punjab government banned the use of cell phones in universities. It did discourage the students who regularly bunk their classes to talk to their friends on cell phones. Although it is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed, the Punjab government's all-encompassing ban on cell-phone use on university campuses is absolutely unjustifiable. Why should the ban be extended to every student when the problem is caused by only a handful of students? Will it not be reasonable if the problem is addressed in a way that doesn't affect the common student on a university campus? The government should explore other possible solutions to a problem before imposing all-encompassing bans. Nosheen Haider, Lahore

Faizan, Islamabad

Pakistan Package While launching Pakistan Package, PTCL activated it on all landline connections with out seeking subscribers' opinion. As for as my personal experience is concerned, PTCL help line was always found busy whenever I tried to deactivate the unwanted package. In the beginning, PTCL advertisements said that the package had been introduced for a limited time and that it would be made non-functional after March 1. But the date passed and the PTCL is still charging its helpless customers Rs 199 per month for a facility they didn't request for. I request PTCL authorities to concentrate on providing quality service to their customers instead of making money by introducing dubious calling packages. Mian Asfandyar, Nowshera

Noise Pollution I am writing to draw the attention of the authorities concerned to the noise pollution caused by the diesel-run booster of a cellular company fixed in our locality. It makes a lot of noise and routine life has become extremely miserable due to its continuous shrillness. I don't want to move to another place but the disturbance and noise pollution will, it seems, compel me to make this decision. Recently, personnel of the authorities concerned visited the site and asked the company's officials not to run the booster on a diesel-based generator. After this, they didn't use the generator for a few days but then fired it up again. Such irresponsible companies should be proceeded against in a court of law for their irresponsible social behaviour. Imran Anwar, Chaklala

Send us your letters at [email protected] or at our postal address. Flare reserves the right to edit letters for clarity and space.

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Telecom

he customers cost Rs 2.50 per minute call to European countries including France, Italy, Malta, Hungry, Finland, Denmark, Cyprus, Belgium, Austria, Germany, United Kingdom, Turkey, Romania, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Rome Canada and even in US. On the contrary, the cell phone service provider companies do not heed to exercises to reduce the tariffs in Muslim countries. No doubt, the government-backed companies, PTCL and Ufone have introduced many good packages to their customers to facilitate in the telecom sector but pay no attention to reduce tariffs in Muslim countries. Same dilemma happens with the cell phone service provider companies who do not heed to reduce the tariffs like Mobilink, Warid, Telenor, Paktel, etc. The majority people earn their livelihood in the Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Muscat, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia and many others Muslim countries whose are not far from Europe and America. Although, during the past eight years, the total number of cellular phone subscribers in the country had been 225,000 but now their number has crossed the figure of 76.6 as compiled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). This scribe suggest to the high-officials of the esteemed companies to take revolutionary steps to decrease the tariff in Muslim countries especially in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Abu Dhabi, etc. so that the middle and lower middle class people contacted their love ones on cheap rates. The call rates are more than Rs 13 per minute. The cellular mobile density is expected to hit 70-75 per cent after which there will be some slowdown in the growth rate of the industry. In 2010, the cellular subscribers will go to 100 million with the aggressive marketing of the cellular companies attracting more and more of the

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Azhar Javed

youth, which is 50 per cent of the population. According to PTA, the current size of the country telecom market is 77 million subscribers, 48 per cent tele-density with an annual growth rate of 100 per cent over the fiscal year 2006-2007. The contribution of telecom in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is placed at 35 per cent of the total FDI and the sector is reported to make up 2 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The industry has come a long way since its lackluster debut in the nineties. For Mobilink, Ufone, Warid, Telenor and Paktel - the five service providers in Pakistan - this has meant a huge increase in research and development. The stakes are high, with each service jostling to entrench its position in an ever-expanding market. Investment has been heavy in network expansion, with million dollar deals being cut with international companies. This is good news for customers. A new world of competition in pricing and technology has opened up, with a number of value added services on offer, designed to lure a particular niche market. Whether in the form of a chat club service for the young and trendy, or corporate club discount options, the wonders of the latest mobile phones can include options such as mobile banking, fax and information services, internet access, instant updates, conference calling and mail. Pakistan's large area and scattered population has not deterred cellular companies from their drive to reach maximum customers in the rural areas. In the past when having a fixed telephone connection was taken as a privilege and a mark of superiority. The subscribers were used to wait for long to get a landline telephone connection and sometimes to no avail even after years spent on waiting. The days when an aristocrat accompanied by a person with a large mobile set in his hand and it was not much back in the past. Then telecommunication advancement started taking place in the country and geared up with the start of the new era. The recent past has witnessed unprecedented growth in Pakistan telecom market as new operators were allowed to enter and ring their own tones to attract potential buyers. Tariffs of cellular mobile phone have reduced whereas NWD call charges of PTCL have come down. Enormous employment openings were generated in the shape of direct hiring by telecom operators. Huge foreign investment has poured in this sector as license and fees and expenditures on infrastructure development.

The Telecom Deregulation Policy was announced in 2003 and since then Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has made tremendous headway towards a free and fair telecom market. The transparent implementation of the Policy has not only brought in a sizable foreign investment but also gave a fresh impetus to the economy of the country. The most interesting aspect in the present telecom scenario is that the end user is being

There is a need to do homework to reduce the tariff to the Muslim countries. In this regard, the government should reduced the taxes on the call rates to the Muslim countries so the customers would take more benefits to the development of the telecom sector in shape of low call rates to the Muslim countries. benefited the most. The subscribers have now expanded number of operators to choose from, innovative telecom products at reduced rates and good quality of service. Not only urban consumers but rural population is also getting benefits of this recent telecom boom in the country which will continue to cast positive impact in future not only on an individual's life but also on national economy at large. The need of the hour is that PTA should direct to the PTCL and cell phone service provider companies to do homework to reduce the tariff to the Muslim countries. In this regard, the government should reduced the taxes on the call rates to the Muslim countries so the customers would take more benefits to the development of the telecom sector in shape of low call rates to the Muslim countries.






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Courtesy Dawn

As per a newsletter sent to its customer by a broadband internet service provider stated that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (www.pta.gov.pk) has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to www.youtube.com web site for containing blasphemous web content/movies he Government of Pakistan ordered the country's 70 ISPs to block Pakistanis from accessing Google's popular video website, YouTube. Turkey and Thailand have in the past also banned access to the site Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website. Internet users in the country were once again exposed to the incompetence of the censors at the helm of the PTA when the telecom regulator directed the country's seventy Internet Service Providers (ISP) to ban access to the popular video sharing website, YouTube. According to the official notice issued by the Deputy Director Enforcement of the PTA, the ban was supposed to be enforced on a specific URL, which featured a 04:58-minute-long trailer from Dutch politician Geert Wilders' controversial anti-Islam movie. However, since the majority of Pakistani ISPs did not have the infrastructure available to enable URL-specific filtering, the entire domain of YouTube was rendered inaccessible to a large section of internet users through out the country. The notice did not specify the explicit reasons behind the ban, merely describing YouTube as an 'offensive website,' but an unnamed government official told Agence France-Presse that an inter-ministerial committee has decided to block YouTube because it contained 'blasphemous content, videos and documents.' But conspiracy theorists alleged the ban was an attempt to shove aside something else. "My understanding is that the ban is due to the clips involving election riggings" commented an enraged user in a message posted on the Society against internet censorship in Pakistan mailing list. Such arguments are strengthened considerably as one realises that the 'blasphemous' Wilder's video had been on YouTube as early as 28th January. It is curious then, that the internet monitor only decided to issue such a delayed ban notification almost a full month after the video was first uploaded, and that too, in the immediate aftermath of the elections. Also worth pondering is the fact that the controversial Wilders' snippet was largely unheard of by Pakistani surfers until the ban came about, whereas the election rigging videos, in sharp contrast, had been doing the rounds in Pakistani cyber circles. Whatever the real reason behind the ban was, it seems to have proved counterproductive in either case. As the Karachi blogger Sidrat Asim notes, "Banning it in such a way is just going to attract more attention to the blasphemous video which would have otherwise gone unnoticed"; the same, it seems, would apply to the rigging videos. The internet by its very nature is very hard to censor, proxies and anonymisers make it possi-

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ble to bypass almost any sort of filtering mechanism, almost always ensuring that censorship, in whatever capacity, only serves to attract more attention and acclaim to material intended to be hidden away from this attention in the first place. The fact that the powers-to-be here have not realised this failure of censorship is neither new, nor surprising. Despite the obvious counterproductive nature of censorship, it has been practiced through human history across the world at various levels. But what is indeed surprising is the dearth of technology at the disposal of Pakistan's internet regulators. It seems that whenever some form of contentious subject matter is available on a certain

ended up in the PTCL's black hole instead, resulting in a global outage of YouTube. Round about the same time on Sunday when YouTube access went down globally, the contentious video in question had already been brought down by YouTube administration because of what the Google country representative in Pakistan, Badar Khusnood, described as a "terms of use violation". Even more ironically however, only a few hours later, Google officials officially disclosed the reasons for the global outage as erroneous routing information introduced by a Pakistani network. Free speech advocates, like the technology blogger Richard Stiennon, found it hard not to

URL on the web, the only means they have to filter it by banning the entire domain of that website, a course of action which has resulted in the previous blanket ban on Blogger and this present outage of YouTube. As Wahaj-us-Siraj, the convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers notes, the government may have its valid reasons for censoring the controversial video, but they have to find a better way of enforcing it. "If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet" he told the BBC. Not content at banning YouTube in just Pakistan however, one service provider, namely the PTCL, decided that the best way to filter the website was to re-rout the IP address block that YouTube's servers are into a 'black hole'. This routing information escaped from the PTCL to its main ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube from around the world

revel in the irony of the turn of events. "A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the internet tides be stopped" he wrote on his blog Threat Choas. "The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan's internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world." Fortunately, this did not happen, but had Stiennon's guess been correct, the establishment itself would have ended up initiating a massive Denial of Service attack on its own country! Malicious intent or not, this certainly proves the levels of competence of both the service providers as well as the telecom regulators in Pakistan. Despite all that has happened, all internet

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Internet and Telecom gurus are somewhat against this practice of blocking entire website rather than blocking only specific content or page. On other hand, "Flare" learnt that Internet service providers in Pakistan do not carry the facility of blocking any specific URL (Web address) users whose ISPs rely on the Pakistan Internet Exchange backbone, still cannot access YouTube at the time of writing. Only a handful of ISPs who rely on the TWA backbone can access YouTube on the whole (with only the controversial video being banned). Pakistani internet users though have now grown accustomed to such clumsy errors on the part of telecom regulating instuitions. But one wonders if this latest embarrassing international faux pas will finally bring about a change in attitudes. A leading net professional said the global outage was "probably a mistake". Pakistan ordered internet service providers to block the site because of content deemed offensive to Islam. Websites technology experts say that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site. Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address. But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world. The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube. Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers A leading net professional told Flare: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was

malicious." IP hijacking involves taking over a web site's unique address by corrupting the internet's routing tables, which direct the flow of data around the world. Reports said Pakistan made the move because YouTube content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many. But one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative way, was behind the

ban. "They (Pakistan Telecommunications Authority) asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers. The government decision has caused uproar in Pakistan, according to Wahaj-us-Siraj: "Users

are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything. "The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet." Other countries that have temporarily blocked access to YouTube include Turkey and Thailand. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid-February 2005. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US$1.65 billion in Google stock. Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. As of February 20, 2008, a YouTube search for returns about 73,500,000 videos, and about 2,750,000 user channels. This leads to a dark recollection of the blanket blocking of the blogspot.com domain which rendered all blogs hosted on Blogspot inaccessible for the majority of Pakistani users who didn't knew how to utilize proxy servers and about bypassing such restrictions. As per a newsletter sent to its customer by a broadband internet service provider stated that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (www.pta.gov.pk) has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to www.youtube.com web site for containing blasphemous web content/movies. Internet and Telecom gurus are somewhat against this practice of blocking entire website rather than blocking only specific conetent or page. On other hand, "Flare" learnt that Internet service providers in Pakistan do not carry the facility of blocking any specific URL (Web address). There are also voices in the market that the decision was taken due to some secret videos, which were uploaded on youtube, revealing certain rigging incidents of February 18 elections.






'Flare' to be Media Partner at Mega Telecom Event he leading telecom news magazine of Pakistan 'Flare' has been announced as a media partner in India & South Asia Com event. Besides huge subscriptions, 12000 copies of the magazine are delivered to the entire telecom sector of Pakistan, leaders of industry, governments, international organizations, legal experts, bankers and the like. For general public, the magazine is available on all the famous bookstalls in the country. Being the first of its nature in Pakistan, the magazine had to swim through a sea of quandaries and the credit goes to the restless efforts and commitment of the Flare team, who made it the best telecom magazine of Pakistan. India & South Asia Com telecom event will be held in Mumbai, India on 23-24 April 2008 to represent, discuss and evaluate the

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telecom industry of over 300 million mobile phone users of South Asia. Over 25 speakers from South Asian telcos, 6 streamed conference agenda alongside a 30 stand exhibition will destine the future prospects for the region. Supported by GSM Associated and partnered by world's major media houses including Time Magazine, Telecom Asia, Newsline, Business Wire and Flare Magazine, first time ever representation from Pakistan, the exhibition is going to discuss the rollout of 3G networks in South Asia that shares 24 per




cent subscribers of entire Asia Pacific.

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Flare Report

Mobilink is creating awareness within the masses through envisioning a new experience on television: a unique 25 minutes travel programme titled, Mobilink's Journey through Pakistan. Through depicting Pakistan in its unabashed glory, the message is loud and clear; in times when people think that Pakistan may not be the most pleasant of places to explore, it remains a country of great natural beauty, rich cultural heritage and humble people

Seeing is believing" and nowhere is this more evident than when gazing upon the splendor and beauty that is Pakistan. Blessed with rich cultural heritage, nature's bounty, and a unique geographical terrain that beautifully juxtaposes the arid deserts of Thar with the snow capped peaks of K-2, it is undoubtedly a country of many attractions and experiences. Indeed, one may even liken it to a symphony of nature which has remained undiscovered till now, and all that is required is to venture out and explore the natural beauty that this land has to offer. Lakes, mountains, deserts and some of the finest and rarest wildlife, all converge upon this land and yet, ironically, it is ourselves, the people of Pakistan that have forgotten the intoxicating beauty of our land. It is interesting to note that many adventurers from both hemispheres have been tempted by the promise of this land and have traveled to this part of the world to witness its magnificence, warmth and hospitality. A nation that is home to the "cradle of civilization" has an obligation to preserve and promote its unique heritage and natural beauty. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through the promotion of tourism, which allows for the creation of awareness, influx of foreign exchange and the projection of a positive and friendly image of the country. For a country like Pakistan possessing all the right ingredients, all that is required is a proactive leader to jump start this process. Through a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, the telecommunications leader, Mobilink has taken on its agenda as a corporate citizen of Pakistan and emerged at the forefront of this initiative to promote tourism and

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preserve cultural heritage within Pakistan. Mobilink is creating great awareness within the masses through envisioning a new experience on television: a unique 25 minutes travel programme titled, Mobilink's Journey through Pakistan. Through depicting Pakistan in its unabashed glory, the message is loud and clear; in times when people think that Pakistan may not be the most pleasant of places to explore, it remains a country of great natural beauty, rich cultural heritage and humble people.

one is taken from the breathtakingly majestic snow covered hills of Murree to the winding inner alleys of Sukkur. Forgotten sights and monuments of great historic value are once again introduced to us and the viewer is left in awe of the splendour and diversity that is Pakistan. Through this exclusive and interesting travel show; Mobilink has taken its agenda as a corporate citizen to new heights by supporting the local tourism industry and allowing the common

Guided by explorer-director Wajahat Malik, viewers are privy to the different faces of Pakistan as he travels in a Volkswagen van which has been transformed into a mobile home. It is fascinating to watch this unique journey as

man access to Pakistan's natural beauty and architectural richness. It is now up to us to take advantage of this opportunity and venture out of our homes to explore the diversity of experiences, sights and sounds that is, Pakistan.




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Flare Report

Chief Executive Officer KHL Usman Sheikh

onnect Holden Limited (KHL) has been granted exclusive distributorship rights to the entire line of construction machinery of a premier Chinese construction giant Foton Lovol. Foton Lovol, the premium Chinese group which is among the worlds largest manufacturer of construction machinery, agricultural machinery and vehicles is now available in Pakistan, Powered by the country's leading service provider to the construction industry i.e. Konnect Holden Limited (KHL). KHL has been granted exclusive distributorship rights to the entire line of construction machinery of this premier Chinese construction giant. This includes their Wheel Loaders, Excavators, Rollers, Backhoe Loaders, Rotary Drilling Rigs, and Crawler Cranes This deal not

only benefits the relations between Pakistan and China, but is also an opportunity for our construction industry to lower their equipment costs substantially. The signing of a deal is truly another feather in the glorious history of Sino-Pak relations. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of KHL Usman Sheikh told 'Flare' that this agreement is a benchmark for the foreign investment in

he political instability and security problems of the country disrupt the negotiations between Instaphone and South Korea Telecom. There were negotiations going on between both the companies in November 2007 that Pakistan's 1st and smallest cellular company by subscriber numbers, Instaphone may have been sold to SK Telecom of South Korea with management control and majority shares. Now South Korea Telecom takes back its decision to buy Instaphone. Instaphone, which started its service back in 1990, hold 350,000 customers in Pakistan, operates using TDMA technology had faced lot of crisis. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) cancelled the license of Instaphone on Jan 4, citing the country's first cellular company's failure to pay its outstanding dues. Instaphone, failed to meet the payment schedule of $291 million for getting the operating license renewed for next 15 years from 2005. Instaphone raised this issue of cancellation of their license n the court and then PTA took back its decision. After having been bought and sold a couple

of times in last few years, Instaphone that has 350,000 customers remaining on its network has seen a gradual decrease in its popularity. A hope raised when there was a contract signed between the two companies and it was decided that South Korea Telecom will buy its 70 percent shares. There were negotiations for sale of its 70 percent share to South Korea Telecom when the worsening political situation in the

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Pakistan. Usman Sheikh further said that it is really appreciating that the foreign investment is coming in the country and it is boosting our economy.






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country disrupted the talks and South Korea Telecom refuses to buy Instaphone. PTA sources told 'Flare' that this is not a good sign for the telecom sector of the country as the foreign investment is not coming and people feel insecure to invest in Pakistan due to security




concerns.

Flare Report

elenor announces winner of Rs. 1 crore. Mr. Zahid Iqbal Rana was announced a winner. On the occasion, Executive Vice President Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Telenor Pakistan Irfan Wahab Khan congratulated the grand prize winner of Rs. 1 crore, Zahid Iqbal Rana, an accountant at an entertainment channel, and thanked him for putting his trust in Telenor Pakistan. "Due to Telenor Pakistan's customer focus, we have managed to become the fastest growing telecom operator in the country. It is because of the trust of our customers that we have crossed 15 million subscriptions within less than 3 years of operation," he said. A jubilant Zahid Iqbal Rana when asked said, "I am extremely happy on winning this prize. At first I didn't believe the good news, thinking it was a hoax. When I realised it is true I thanked Almighty for His kindness and also my parents and family, without whose prayers and good wishes there wouldn't be a prize. The first thing I would want to do with this prize is to take my mother for Ummrah." He thanked Telenor Pakistan for sharing their success in Pakistan with their subscribers. Commenting on the Scheme, Regional Director Central-I Telenor Pakistan, Malik Faisal Qayyum, said, "As the 4th campaign in the Crorepati series, this was the biggest and the most successful with Rs. 15 million in prizes and over 60 million entries for the bumper and grand

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Zahid Iqbal Rana, a winner of Rs. 1 crore is receiving cheque of Rs. 10 million from Telenor.

prizes." He further added that these schemes are designed to provide benefits to Telenor Pakistan's subscribers at large and show the company's commitment to its clientele. The scheme was launched following strong demand from customers who showed keen interest in previous Crorepati schemes. Customers were entered in the daily draw on a cumulative recharge of Rs. 50, and in the weekly and grand prize draw on a cumulative recharge of Rs. 100. The scheme that lasted

from December 12, 2007 to January 11, 2008 also allowed multiple entries for those who recharged their balances more than once. Telenor ASA is an international provider of high quality telecommunications, data and media communication services. It ranks as world's 7th largest mobile operator with a total of 143 million subscribers in its mobile operations. Telenor Pakistan is 100% owned by Telenor ASA and adds on to its operations in Asia together with Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh.






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Flare Report

he leading investment group Abu Dhabi Group has enterd Gorgia with huge investment in banking sector. New Director of Standard Bank appointed on March 6 by Abu Dhabi Group, new owner of Georgian Bank, developed by Salford Capital, investment company associated with Boris Berezovski and Badri Patarkatsihvili. Announcement on purchase of Standard Bank by Abu Dhabi Group was announced on March 6, 2008. Bank PR department said new CEO of Standard Bank introduced to Georgian media on March 7. Minister of Higher education and Science of United Arab Emirates His Highness Nayan Bin Mubarak Al Nayan visited Tbilisi in February. His Highness was invited by the President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili . His Higness is a founder and the chairman of management board of Abu Dhabi Group, one of the largest investment groups in the Middle East. Mr. Bashir. A.Tahir, CEO of Dhabi group is also

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Abu Dhabi Group has already invested in two sectors and has two projects in Georgia: One of them is JSC KOR Bank, Georgia which has received the operations license from National Bank of Georgia. Another sphere of investment is in Telecommunications market under the company name Warid Telecom Georgia Ltd. More than 80 million dollars is expected to be invested in this sector till the end of 2008

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a member of the visiting delegation from Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi Group has already invested in two sectors and has up two projects in Georgia: One

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"Another sphere of investment is in Telecommunications market under the company name Warid Telecom Georgia Ltd. More than 80 million dollars is expected to be invested in this sector till the end of 2008. License for Wi Max frequency was purchased 3 months ago for more than 10 million dollars. According to the plans of Dhabi Group Georgia, Warid Telecom, Georgia wireless internet and enhanced telephony services will cover the whole territory of Georgia by the end of current year. "Another activity of the company will be hotel construction business. The representatives of the group are currently searching for a suitable place in Tbilisi central citz for the construction of a five star hotel. The budget of the project is intended to be over two hundred million H.E. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al-Nahyan, Minister of Education, dollars and will be spent during United Arab Emirates. three years. The activities of the Dhabi Group would not be limited to the sectors mentioned above, therefore the search for potentially viable projects will continue. Dhabi Group has been investing for 40 years in The Middle East Region and the countries of Asia and Africa. The group currently owns interests in several banks, insurance companies and telecommunications business. "The value of the whole portfolio of the group is above 10 billion dollars. Except investing in Georgian market, Abu Dhabi Group is seeking the possibility for investing in Ukrainian and Azerbaijan markets", company said. Abu Dhabi Group is expected to join the local mobile communications market of Georgia. Last week the group announced about making an investment in the Telecommunications market under the company name Warid Telecom Georgia Ltd. More than USD 80 million is expected to be invested in this sector by the end of 2008. A license for Wi Max frequency was purchased 3 months ago for more than USD 10 million. According to the Mr. Bashir. A.Tahir, CEO of Abu Dhabi Group. plans of Dhabi Group Georgia, Warid Telecom, Georgia wireless of them is JSC KOR Bank, Georgia which has internet and enhanced telephony services will received the operations license from National cover the whole territory of Georgia by the end of Bank of Georgia. the current year, 2008. The company is not "The first branch of JSC KOR bank should excluding the possibility of expanding to the mobe operational in 6 months. 10 million dollars




bile communications market. have been paid as a capital requirement for this banking license", group representative said.

Telecom

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Rizwan Khan

t least 66% villages in Pakistan do not have access to the telecom in this modern era of latest telecommunication, and this situation is a matter of great concern for the government, the Punjab Economic Report 2007 revealed. “Out of the 48,268 villages in Pakistan, only 16,353 or 34 percent have telecom access, though there has been tremendous growth in the country’s tele-density, following the liberalization of the telecom sector. However, out of 13.67 percent total tele-density, rural tele-density is as low as 1.26 percent,” the report disclosed. According to the Punjab Economic Report 2007, released by the Punjab government a couple of weeks ago, the Punjab has the highest tele-density in the country after Sindh. However, tele-density trend in its rural areas (e.g., in southern Punjab) is not very encouraging. According to the report, 41.5 percent of the rural population in Punjab has telecom access, but this figure may be disputed as the definition of “rural” is not entirely clear nor is definite the number of villages in Punjab. PTA is making efforts to bridge the gap between rural and urban Punjab and a strategy has been formed to address this issue. Private investment is required to ignite the development of information and communication technology in rural areas. “There is need to increase public-private partnerships, create awareness among common people, and encourage commercial banks to introduce financial schemes for rural areas,” the report said. Similarly, providing cross subsidies, access deficit charges, and universal service funds to operators working in rural areas are other options for increasing rural tele-density in Punjab. Rural tele-centres could also be installed to improve tele-density, the report further suggested. In addition, the PTA is taking the necessary steps to expand telecom facilities across underserved and remote areas of Punjab. Under the deregulation policy, a universal service obligation fund has been created to develop telecom facilities in rural areas. This fund will be utilized in consultation with the provincial governments. Mobile operators have been allowed to establish mobile PCOs in areas where fixed-line telephone services are not available. Use of wireless technology (WLL) has facilitated the extension of telecom facilities to un-served areas. PTA

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According to the Punjab Economic Report 2007, the Punjab has the highest teledensity in the country after Sindh. However, tele-density trend in its rural areas is not very encouraging must explore the possibility of establishing community-based telecasters, allowing telecom facilities to be shared instead of having dedicated facilities. Such measures would help bridge the

In order to provide wireless (WLL) services in remote and rural areas where laying landlines is difficult, the PTA has issued 76 licenses to 17 companies for provision of local loop services in Pakistan. So far, only four have started commercial operations

digital divide, promote the economy, and alleviate poverty. According to this report, the government of Punjab aims to improve the important sector of transport and communication. The Vision 2020 focuses on improving inter-city and urban transport, modernizing road networks, and developing mass transit networks for mega-cities. The report further said

that about 3,026,982 fixed line connections are operating across Punjab out of which 2,303,006 were in urban areas and 723,976 connections in rural areas in FY 2005. Tele-density in Punjab rose from 2.7 percent in 2003 to 3.5 percent in 2005. The report also said that in order to provide wireless (WLL) services in remote and rural areas where laying landlines is difficult, the PTA has issued 76 licenses to 17 companies for provision of local loop services in Pakistan. So far, only four have started commercial operations. Currently, 128,792 (WLL) connections are provided by PTCL and Telecard in Punjab. At present, total WLL tele-density in Punjab stands at 0.15 percent and is expected to increase in coming years. The PTCL provides WLL services to 78 cities and towns in Punjab. The report also disclosed that currently there are 7,157,223 cellular mobile phone subscribers in Punjab. The number of cellular subscribers in Punjab grew by 86 percent in FY2005. Over 365 cities are covered by cellular operators in Pakistan, 200 of which are in Punjab. New companies such as Telenor and Warid are expanding their operations rapidly and it is expected that more cities

and towns will soon be covered by these companies. The Punjab’s payphone sector has grown rapidly in the last three years, creating employment opportunities at the lowest level. Currently, a total of 162,710 card payphones operate across the province. In order to provide telecom facilities to more remote areas, mobile operators are also allowed to establish mobile PCOs where fixed-line telephones are not available. So far, a total of 25,332 wireless payphones have



been installed in Punjab.

Event

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Flare Report

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008, the company's worldwide event dedicated to enterprise customers, prospects, business partners, press and analysts; witnessed more than 60 conference sessions, led by industry visionaries, expert analysts, partners, customers and Alcatel-Lucent executives, where participants explored the relationship of networks, people, processes and knowledge within a Dynamic Enterprise he Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008, held on February 20-21, 2008, observed high numbers of industry analysts and the international trade press positively receiving the Keynote address on The Dynamic Enterprise, Alcatel-Lucent's vision for the enterprise network. This vision is of an agile, mobile, knowledgeable and responsive environment where Enterprise 2.0 applications and Alcatel-Lucent's secure, always-on communication technologies strengthen business relationships, simplify communications, and improve enterprise performance. In a Dynamic Enterprise, the powerful collective knowledge generated through these technologies is integrated with company networks, people and processes in real time to provide competitive differentiation. Enterprise Forum was filled with major product and customer win announcements and over 60 conferences supporting The Dynamic Enterprise where customers, partners, and technology leaders shared their knowledge and created networking opportunities. The Alcatel-Lucent City and Partner Villages also provided an opportunity for participants to discover the latest solutions and cutting edge technologies through more than 60 demonstration stations. Forum started off with a keynote session on "The Dynamic Enterprise". Pat Russo, Chief

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Executive Officer, Alcatel-Lucent spoke to the high energy crowd about how the company has addressed the uncertainties that the company faced last year and how it delivered on its commitment to the Enterprise market. She stated that throughout 2007, Alcatel-Lucent increased its investment in Enterprise sales and marketing and that key acquisition in data and contact centers had rounded out its product portfolio. Also by leveraging the entire Alcatel-Lucent portfolio, the company is able to provide a unique value to its customers. Ms. Russo explained, "We live in real-time with the reality of a dynamic environment that impacts every aspect of the way we work and live. Constant change demands dramatically and quickly transform our organization, and our individual and collective relationships to them to create value and sustainable advantage." Attendees had a choice of more than 60 conferences across the two days of Forum on specific areas of interest, more than half of these featured guest speakers such as industry analysts, consultants, customers and partners; they spoke on variety of topics such as security, convergence, collabora-

tion, mobility, contact centers, User Profiles, and services. The Alcatel-Lucent City, which was located in

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Flare Report

Zubair Ahmed Kasuri, Editor-in-Chief Flare, with other participants at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008.

the heart of the Forum, connected attendees with the very best technology the communications world has to offer. Users expressed their appreciation at being able to get to grips with the technology directly; they were able to push the buttons, touch the screens and see how all of it works together. Alcatel-Lucent demonstrations were divided up into areas that address the various needs of specific market segments including: Small and Medium Businesses, Mid-sized Enterprises, Large Enterprises, Industries, Service Providers and Services with a special area set aside for Innovations. Industries addressed included Healthcare, Finance, Government, Hospitality, Transportation, Education, Energy, Manufacturing, Retail, and Defense and Security. Also in the exhibition area is the AlcatelLucent Partner Villages filled with Business Partners, Application Partners, and Alliance Partners. The aisles were overflowing with visitors to the various partner displays. They discussed the latest technologies, innovative applications and business services that add value to Alcatel-Lucent solutions and to the business. Major Announcements
Alcatel-Lucent BiCS voice platform was

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selected by T-Systems for mid-market managed services
Italian Trade Commission deploys AlcatelLucent VoIP network worldwide
Swinton Insurance boosts competitive edge with Alcatel-Lucent's IP telephony and contact centre solutions
Enterprises and distribution channels worldwide benefit from expanded Alcatel-Lucent NCR services agreement
ZON Multimédia selects Alcatel-Lucent and Genesys to streamline and optimize its customer service in Portugal
Traders Classifieds selects Alcatel-Lucent for national call center solution in Australia
Alcatel-Lucent teams with HP to secure Services Oriented Architectures (SOAs)
Genesys Placed in Leaders Quadrant of Leading Analyst Firm's 2008 IVR and Enterprise Voice Portals Report
HP Helps Alcatel-Lucent Create State-ofthe-art Data Center The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum, as always, served as a wonderful source of information. Alcatel-Lucent announced T-Systems, the business customer unit of Deutsche Telekom, has selected its Business integrated Communications Solution (BiCS) server as one of the platforms for its mid-market managed voice services. Alcatel-Lucent announced a product integration that brings together the HP SOA Systinet governance software with Alcatel-Lucent's OmniAccess 8550 Web Services Gateway. The combined Alcatel-Lucent and HP solution offers highly secure governance and regulatory compliance capabilities that let enterprises fully benefit from SOA while mitigating potential security risks associated with traditional SOA deployments. This solution is a must for organizations that require adherence to strict information privacy legislation, in industries such as healthcare, government, finance, and education. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum 2008 was a resounding success! This year's event drew over 7,400 visitors from more than 100 countries for a two-day whirlwind of knowledge sharing, learn




ing, networking, and opportunities!

Alcatel-Lucent helps Double Link Between Asia and Europe lcatel-Lucent announced that it will be upgrading the capacity of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SeaMe-We) 4 submarine cable system that connects numerous countries from Singapore to France. With completion scheduled in 2009, this multi-million dollar second upgrade project will double the existing trunk capacity of the system, going beyond the original design capacity, enabling Sea-Me-We 4 to support the increased broadband traffic requirements along the route. Owned and operated by 16 carriers, Sea-MeWe 4 spans nearly 20,000 km linking 14 countries from France to Singapore via Italy, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia with 16

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landing points. Alcatel-Lucent had the turnkey responsibility of this state-of-the-art network from design to laying for segments 2, 3, and 4 linking Mumbai to Marseilles, as well as the overall responsibility for the synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) end-to-end realization. AlcatelLucent, and its co-contractor Fujitsu, had supplied the initial Sea-Me-We 4 network that started commercial operation in the fourth quarter of 2005. The network's capacity was subsequently tripled in the third quarter of 2007. Under the terms of the contract, AlcatelLucent will upgrade the India-France submarine link by deploying, installing and commissioning

additional dense wavelength division multiplexing equipment (DWDM), based on its 1620 Light Manager. In addition, AlcatelLucent will upgrade the 1626 Light Manager-based terrestrial link connecting Alexandria and Suez, and the existing SDH equipment, the Alcatel-Lucent 1678 Metro Core Connect, for this extensive network. With more than 461,500 km of submarine cables laid across continents, Alcatel-Lucent has played a key role in the development and implementation of the most important submarine




cable networks in operation today. 23

Telecom

TCL launched its Broadband Entertainment Portal and new packages for its DSL subscribers, affirming its customers that the access to the portal will be absolutely free-of-cost exclusively for PTCL Broadband Pakistan customers. "The history is in the making as this is the first Broadband Portal of the country which offers to the subscribers a variety of professional media content including but not limited to mainstream music (Urdu and English), movies, naats and sports," said Dr Sadiq Al Jadir, SEVP Commercial at a press conference held at a local hotel in Islamabad. Briefing the media about the salient features of new portal. Ali Qadir Gillani SEVP, Zomma Mohyuddin EVP Broadband and other PTCL officers were also present. Jadir said the PTCL initiative would make the country embrace the broadband economies of the world. "PTCL has invested $50 million to improve its services for our valued customers. We are competing the market and for the purpose we are expanding our capacity," he said. Jadir admitted that up gradation of the PTCL helpline service was a serious challenge to the repute of the institution and the company was making efforts to improve the service. He assured the journalists that the number of faulty lines is being minimised and the PTCL is making every step essential to make the company a quality service provider. "PTCL is aware of the fact that the customers need high speed and large download capacity to fully experience the Broadband Portal - the

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Flare Report

PTCL is aware of the fact that the customers need high speed and large download capacity to fully experience the Broadband Portal - the movies and music, sports coverage and religious material. Thus, the Broadband Pakistan packages have been upgraded for the benefit of all existing and new subscribers

movies and music, sports coverage and religious material. Thus, the Broadband Pakistan packages have been upgraded for the benefit of all existing and new subscribers," he said. "PTCL Broadband Pakistan is now offering incredibly cost effective, constantly available internet access as the internet access speed for existing subscribers has been doubled while they are now allowed unlimited downloads for the same amount that they were previously paying. New subscribers will also be required to pay the new tariff while the modem and DSL installation is completely free," he said. Broadband Pakistan offers DSL services with unmatched reliability, affordability and connectivity. Earlier, customers had the option of subscrib-

provides matter across many main categories: Religion, Music, Sports, News, and Movies. It has the latest music videos, movie previews, short films, sports news and clips and more, all available for Broadband Pakistan subscribers. Broadband Pakistan, high-speed internet, with a high rate of data transmission that offers extremely fast unlimited online internet time to customers, is a stellar example of innovative services and packages offered by PTCL while the PTCL Broadband Entertainment Portal is powered by Converge Technologies and provides a unique experience to the user. The broadband video market is the next frontier on the web and broadband video is the next generation of television. All the largest telecom-

Senior Executive Vice President PTCL, Dr Sadiq Al Jabar addresses a press conference regarding the launching ceremony of "PTCL Buzz" at a local hotel. Executive Vice President (External) Ali Qadir Gillani is also seen in the picture.

ing to either the volume based (256Kbps, 512Kbps) or unlimited access (1Mbps) packages, but now for the price of the 256Kbps package subscribers would get the 512Kbps service with unlimited downloads. Similarly, the other packages of 512Kbps and 1Mb have been upgraded to 1Mb and 2Mb respectively without any increase in price. Under the new Pakistan Package, the customers would have to pay Rs. 1,199 per month for 512 Kbps unlimited service as compared to the previous cost of Rs. 1,999. The subscribers would have to pay only Rs. 1,999 for 1024 Kbps unlimited service as compared to the previous amount of Rs. 4,999 per month while the cost for 2048 Kbps unlimited would be Rs. 4,999 per month. The new PTCL Broadband Entertainment Portal is strictly about professional content and

munications companies have a presence in this market and the PTCL Broadband Portal is set to emerge as a principal player in this context. The ease of acquiring the service and maintaining the service has made PTCL the leader in consumer broadband services in Pakistan, leading the country into the 21st century. Broadband customer service is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week at 1236 with highly trained and professional representatives. The PTCL Broadband Pakistan connection can be ordered by simply calling 1236 or visiting the




PTCL website at www.ptcl.com.pk.

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Flare Report

Telecom

TCL announced results for the first half of financial year 2008. The company posted a net loss after tax of Rs 9.5 billion (Loss per share Rs 1.87) against profit after tax of Rs 8.4 billion (EPS Rs 1.64) in first half of financial year 2007 depicting a massive decline of 217%. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2008 the company posted a loss after tax of Rs 12.6 billion (Loss Per Share Rs 2.46) as against profit after tax of Rs 3.2 billon (EPS RS 0.63) in the same period last year. Company's operating expenses jumped to Rs 45.5 billion in the first half of FY08, as against Rs22.6 billion in the first half of FY07 up 102 per-

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cent on year. In addition, the revenues of the company also experienced a decline of 11 percent and stood at Rs 29 billion in 1 HFY08 as against Rs 32.7 billion in 1 HFY07. Analyst opined that substantial decrease in earnings was mainly driven by the declining fixed line revenues as consumers shifted from fixed line to more convenient wireless technology and lower international incoming traffic termination rates. Non-operating income, which decreased by Rs 439 billion year on year also contributed to the negative earnings in 1HFY08.

The major reason for the negative earnings in the current period was the recognition of the huge Voluntary Seperation Scheme (VSS) cost as large number of employee opted out through the said scheme. However, analysts said the restructuring would result in better earning in future. Analyst believe that operating coast includge the huge amount of VSS combined with other legacy provisions which is estimated to be around Rs 20 billion to Rs 22 billion and Rs 1 bil




lion to Rs 2 billion respectively.

he federal ombudsman has served a show-cause notice to the PTCL chief executive and asked him to explain the delay in implementing its recommendations on a 'misleading customer package'. The ombudsman asked the PTCL chief to give reasons why legal proceedings for defiance of the recommendations should not be initiated and the matter should not be referred to the President of Pakistan. A statement issued said Ombudsman Javed Sadiq Malik found a lack of transparency in the telephone company's package for customers regarding the facility of making international calls to 16 countries around the world at Rs2 per minute. The Wafaqi Mohtasib termed the pack-

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age misleading, perverse and an unjust practice, falling within the definition of 'maladministration' according to the President's Order No. 1 of 1983. Investigations into the case had been initiated on the complaint of a citizen and the probe revealed that advertisements appearing in the national press were designed and presented in a manner that it did not transparently disclose the full cost per minute for international calls. Although the advertised rate of Rs2 per minute had been qualified by a small-sized print indicating that it was valid for calls made from landlines and mobile phones in only four countries, it was placed sideways and in a way that made it difficult for readers to spot it immediate-

ly.

TCL offers a dedicated service to provide billing information to its valued subscribers who can simply dial '1200' to access instant billing information of the required PTCL service. This facility is part of an array of efforts by PTCL to make bill information and payments convenient and effortless for the customer. PTCL customers now have the flexibility to choose between dropping a cheque in a drop box at a location near them and sending their payments through mail at a nearby post office or making bill payments from their homes. With the '1200' service customers can now find out what their current and outstanding bill amounts are and then pay them through the bill payment cards which are available in a range of denominations. PTCL recently introduced the Bill Payment Cards, which enabled its customers to pay their phone bill from the convenience of their homes. PTCL realized that certain

customers were not receiving their bills on time or at all due to incorrect addresses on their initial application forms as a result of which they had to visit the PTCL Customer Care Centres for duplicate bills. The '1200' service will eliminate the need for broadband and fixed line customers to have duplicate bills issued. With the introduction of this service, customers no longer need to personally visit customer service centers to find out what their bill amounts are and the automated service is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to further facilitate the PTCL customers. PTCL has also made arrangements with certain leading banks of the country to allow its customers to pay their PTCL bills through various electronic modes. At Muslim Commercial Bank Limited PTCL bills can be paid through the ATMs, through the MCB Call Centre at 111-000-622 and via internet banking. The Askari Commercial Bank also offers pay-

ment options through the ATM card and via internet banking. Meanwhile the number of banks that accept cash payment of PTCL bills is also steadily increasing. PTCL's valued customers can pay their bills throughout the country at most of the leading banks in their respective areas. The Pakistan Post Office has also provided the PTCL bill payment facility at more than 3,000 branches across the country. Low call rates, speedy connectivity, superior voice quality and quality customer care are some of the reasons why consumer confidence in PTCL increases day by day. As Dr. Sadik AlJadir, Senior Executive Vice President (Commercial) stated, "The Company has already introduced a variety of valued added services for its customers while a number of oth




ers are in the pipeline.

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In fact, apart from the four countries, the rate was only applicable to the other 12 countries only if the calls were made from a landline to a landline telephone, the statement said. Because of this customers could be misled into using the PTCL service at a much higher rate than it is immediately obvious from the announcements placed in newspapers. The ombudsman directed the PTCL to readvertise the package in public interest and clearly indicate the countries to which calls would be charged at Rs2 per minute when called from landline and mobile phones, and those where the rate was applicable only if calls were




made from landline to landline phones.

PTCL to Come to Customers for a Closer Contact akistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) announced its plans to set up customers' facilitation points in an effort to keep a closer contact with its subscribers. The facilitation points, which would initially be launched for customers in Rawalpindi, would be a one-stop shop where subscribers would be able to place orders for various PTCL services, including new telephone connection, wireless (Vfone) and DSL broadband.

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The one-stop facility would also serve as a complaint centre the PTCL staff would resolve problems like faulty phones, installation of telephones, Wireless Local Loop, DSL, delivery of phone bills and excessive billing. The customer facilitation programme, a one-day service, would commence at 10am on February 23 and continue till 5pm. The points would be set up at two locations - the National Bank of Pakistan, Bank Road Saddar, and Satellite Town, Commercial Market.


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Obituary

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Veqar ul Islam

Bader - My Brother, My Mentor, My Role Model, My Inspiration

adies and Gentlemen it is with great pleasure that I invite my brother, my mentor, my inspiration, my role model - Bader ul Islam to speak on this occasion. This was the typical line I used when we were doing the farewell round for Bader in 1999. This was time when he was transferred to head NCR West Africa region after serving as Country Manager for Pakistan for almost 9 years. I was so proud and delighted that I am taking over the reigns of NCR from a man who was not just Bhaijaan to me, but who was my boss and the sole reason of how and why I landed in the corporate IT world. It was an incredible coincidence that in 2005 I again handed back the reigns of NCR Pakistan to Bader, when I decided to jump ship and move to the Telecom world. Bader left us when he was only 58, however, the richness with which he passed his life, the commitment he had to whatever cause he opted for, the way he handled pressure, the way he climbed the ladder of success is simply a fairy tale story. He passed a complete life. As tears roll down my eyes, I will make an attempt to live through some of those moments to motivate all those who will read this humble tribute and to convince them that anyone with passion, hardwork, adherence to right values, humility, focus, family bondings can go places in life. Bader was no ordinary man. He was no ordinary corporate leader either. The story of his life is one that can inspire anyone to take on bigger, higher, greater challenges in life despite all the hurdles, uncertainties and unfairness of life. Bader was a simple graduate. Even in the 70's someone with a Bachelor's degree would not get a half decent job. I remember fairly well that one time Bader was so disgruntled and frustrated with life that he decided to take on the job of a labourer to do some digging work at Shahrah e Faisal in Karachi. Interestingly the day he was about to opt for this, he got a job of a store keeper in a spinning mill which he opted for. However, this surely was not something he

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would have ever settled for. He wanted a job to get things going in his life and then take one step after the other to keep surprising people. He only worked in the spinning mill for couple of months and then with the help of a friend set up (probably the second of its kind) a Computer Training Institute in Karachi. This lasted for sometime and then he got a job with a Wang distributor in Karachi. A shining career started. Bader always had the potential and was waiting for the right break which he now got with sheer perseverance and persistence. During this time he got married (in 1975) and found one of the finest lady (my beloved Bhabi) to walk shoulder to shoulder to him in this march to progress. He left for Kuwait in 1977 to join Burrough (which subsequently merged to form Unisys) as an Account Manager and continued to ride the success ladder. In 1982 my family met with a major tragedy when my father died. We were all very young and except for one of my sister (who is younger to Bader) who was already married, all other 6 brothers and sisters were studying. Bader was a family man with strong family values and bondings. He made one of the most shocking decisions to abandon his rising and shining career with Burroughs and took the flight back home. For him to be closer to our mother and all young brothers and sisters was lot more important than the attraction of making money and a career outside Pakistan. The family needed money; however, for him his presence was lot more important. Bear in mind that he was only 33 when this happened. Not an age where you accept such a huge responsibility of becoming a lynchpin for the family and assume the role of a father and a mentor. His faith that he is doing it for all the right reasons and God will reward him with his blessing was close to being unbelievable. Rewarded he was to the full. He got a job with NCR and since then he never looked back. What made him so special to the entire family was the role he assumed to be the father, to be pillar to be the mentor to guide the family to suc-

cess. The fact that today the family comprises of doctor's, engineers, corporate leaders speaks volumes of how he fulfilled his responsibility in this role. While he helped the family succeed, his own journey of progress continued unabated. Years after years he continued his march and finally in 1989-90 he became the Country head of NCR, a position he held for 9 consecutive years with great success and innovation. I think it would be only fair for me to say that Bader was the founder of modern day NCR in Pakistan. He would always think out of box. He would always want to be different. He knew that differentiation in today's world is the key to success and he would think and work tirelessly to position the organization as an innovator and a leader in the IT landscape. He gave so many new concepts to the IT industry of Pakistan that the entire industry subsequently followed his footsteps. From the approach of establishing first of its kind NCR Education Center for students to learn IT, to establishing a Corporate Development Centers for professionals, from initiating Self Service Banking concept in Pakistan to initiating the concept of Open Systems and Industry standards, from organizing first of its kind IT week in the country to initiating IT Excellence Awards, from giving the concept of developing a local self service application to coming up with indigenous solutions which were also adopted within NCR region - he was innovation personified. Besides innovation, Bader's personal touch was almost unmatched. He was a man who gave new life to Computer Society of Pakistan. He truly was amongst the pioneer of IT industry of Pakistan and brought a new dimension to this industry. I had a very very special relationship with Bader. I grew up looking to him. All my brothers and sisters believe that we have been orphaned the second time in life. Such was his presence and aura for all of us. May God rest his soul in peace! (Amen).








Telecom

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Flare Report

RG International, the market leader in Contact Center Technology in the country recently participated at the world's premier financial technology event MEFTEC that was held under the auspices of the Central Bank of Bahrain. The event consisted of an exhibition and a conference that was attended by at least 200 CIOs and over 500 delegates from around the globe. Visitors including CIOs and CTOs from various financial institutes were impressed to learn about the successful Contact Center environments in Pakistan and gave excellent feedback about the deployment of latest solutions and the utilization of advanced technology by ZRG in Pakistan. ZRG has been providing end-to-end international contact center technologies from Intel Corporation, USA since 1994. Due to the reliability, advanced features and cost-effective approach, Intel Contact Center technology has become the most preferred choice among the leading brands. Majority of the contact centers in the country including Bank Alfalah, United Bank, Askari Master Card and 15 other financial organiza-

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tions have installed Intel Contact Center solutions. ZRG continues to engage in such international events to project an impressive image of

Pakistan's IT capabilities. Such efforts are bound to benefit the country in the long run and will result in increased software export earn




ings.

Telecom

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Flare Report

t's no secret that online social networking communities have reached a near-legendary level of success over the past few years, with sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and Orkut attracting memberships in the tens of millions. Like it or not, the broadband-connected PC has become one of chief communication platforms of modern times, as countless friendships, love affairs, and lucrative business connections are created each and every day on the world wide web. The world wide web, however, no longer exists solely on conventional computers, and is becoming accessible from virtually anywhere, even on the smallest of wireless devices. It seems inevitable, therefore, that social networking, with its emphasis on instant, long distance communication, will become a primarily mobile phenomenon in the years to come. This important paradigm shift seems to have started in earnest over the past year, 2006, in which America's largest wireless carriers all jumped on the social networking bandwagon, rolling-out a variety of specialized mobile communication services. The largest U.S. carrier, Cingular Wireless, has embodied an especially determined attitude to this important new market.

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ince the first photographic cell phones were launched in late 2000, the digital camera has become an increasingly common accessory on mobile phones around the world. Camera phones allow users to snap pictures on the spot then send them to friends, family, and colleagues around the globe at the touch of a button. This convenience has caught on big time with consumers (not to mention carriers who make money whenever photos are shared), prompting handset makers to equip the majority of new cellular devices with built-in digital cameras. The quality of cell phone cameras has also grown exponentially over the past few years, with a resolution of at least 2 megapixels now coming standard with most converged smartphones and multimedia-enabled wireless devices. Most of Nokia's N-Series multimedia handsets, for example, come with either 2- or 3.2-megapixel cameras, with one higher end model, the N95, boasting a 5-megapixel resolution. In 2006, South Korean cell phone maker, Samsung Electronics, made history by integrating high-quality cameras in some of its most lightweight cell phones, proving that camera phones need never been at all heavy or clunky.

Several months ago, the company's executive directory of segment marketing and sponsorships, David Garver, was quoted as saying that Cingular will host as many social communi-

ties as possible in the future. "Will social network applications be some of the biggest applications Cingular sells? Yes," Garver insisted. Since then, Cingular has worked hard to promote Rabble, a $3/month mobile communication and information-sharing platform launched in partnership with San Diego-based Intercasting Corp. More recently, the carrier has also launched a fully functional version of MySpace for wireless devices.

This hot new service will soon be extended to work on 90% of Cingular handset models, allowing users to read and respond to their MySpace email messages, write blog entries, and upload photos onto their personal homepages, at a cost of just $2.95 per month. In terms of revenue potential, $2.95 per user might not seem like much for the industry to get excited about, but Cingular and other wireless carriers have come up with a number of ways to turn these services into cash. First and foremost, the availability of advanced wireless communication features will increase the mobile data bandwidth used by subscribers, creating additional revenue for carriers, and ultimately encouraging users to sign up for unlimited data plans. Mobile search and banner advertising are also expected to be important revenue generators for businesses involved in the roll-out of mobile social networking, as big name advertisers begin to realize the value of promoting via the third screen. Overall, it seems that strong all-round revenue will be a natural long-term consequence for whatever companies are best able to ride the growing wave of wireless social networking. Let




the race continue…

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Later in the year, they took this one step further by releasing the SCH-B600, a compact camera phone weighting just 173 grams and boasting a record-setting 10-megapixel resolution. The joint venture, Sony Ericsson has been another leading contender in the mobile imaging market, launching a number of high-quality camera phones, some of which come equipped with mobile blogging and online photo sharing capa-

bilities. In a matter of a few short years, our thirst for new gadgets and technological integration has turned the cellular camera from an obscure and trivial accessory into a virtually ubiquitous fea




ture on new mobile devices.

Pictorial

Workers put up a picture of mobile phones for the upcoming CeBIT fair inside a hall in Hanover March 1, 2008. The world's biggest IT fair CeBIT opens its doors to the public.

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Microsoft researcher Patrick Baudisch demonstrates how "LucidTouch" technology allows users of touch-screen devices such as GPS units or mobile phones to perform touch-screen operations from behind the device so their actions do not block their view of the display during a demonstration at TechFest, Microsoft Corp.'s annual display of experiemental technology, in Redmond, Wash.

Julian Andino, left, and Chrisellda Arellano examine Dell computers at Best Buy, in Atwater Village section of Los Angeles. Dell is expected to release quarterly earnings.

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An Indian daily wage labourer speaks on his mobile phone as he waits for customers at a local market in Mumbai. India's Congress-led government announced a budgetary proposal which provided huge debt relief for farmers as it reached out to its traditional rural support base in possibly its last budget before the next polls. The proposal offered a debt relief package for farmers of 600 billion rupees (15.05 billion USD) in the budget for the year starting April 1. India's finance minister P.Chidambaram said he was confident the economy would grow nearly nine percent in the current fiscal year to March 2008, down from 9.6 percent the previous year due to aggressive monetary tightening to curb inflation.

Seized electronic equipment is seen during a police press conference in Hanover, northern Germany. Police and customs officials investigating suspected patent violations seized mobile phones, navigation devices and other gadgets in raids at a technology fair in Germany.

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Flare Report

In order to bring the spotlight more on the concept of Green IT, the CeBIT is working with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group founded in 2007 with the participation of Microsoft, Google, Intel, IBM and others. Its objectives are to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases caused by the use of computers by 54 million tons annually eBIT 2008 got off to an excellent start, earning high satisfaction ratings from visitors and exhibitors alike. The decidedly positive mood at the official opening ceremony, which was attended by a very distinguished line-up of guests, continued throughout the first few days of the show. From the very beginning CeBIT reaffirmed its claim to be the No.1 meeting place for the crème de la crème of the international ICT industry. CeBIT's new show layout was warmly welcomed, by over 5,845 exhibitors from 77 countries, and visitor traffic has been non-stop. New-look CeBIT has completely lived up to the expectations of visitors and show casers equally. Exhibitors, this year, reported lively action at their stands. They made significantly more new contacts, with lots of serious inquiries from prospective buyers. CeBIT saw a positive response to the new supporting program 'CeBIT Global Conferences'. CeBIT has already decided to carry on with this program next year and extend it further. This feature of the show made CeBIT an even more vital platform for the knowledge-sharing and international know-how transfer that visitors demand. Having this as an integral part of the show really added value, and made CeBIT an absolute must for the digital industry worldwide. On the first three days of CeBIT, more than 700 city mayors and top municipal officials were at the show to check out all the latest trends in public administration at the 'Public Sector Parc' display. Meanwhile 450 experts from Germany's Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank chains gave visitors a foretaste of the 'bank of the future' in Hall 17. On Thursday senior decision-makers from the car industry were given a special tour designed specifically for them, tak-

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at several hundred exhibition stands, at the 'Green IT Village' and in many forums throughout the show. Other major areas of visitor interest included solutions and applications for the business world, software as a service, IT security, RFID for companies in the SME sector, mobile Internet, mobile phone TV, navigation devices with multifunctional applications, mini-notebooks at mini-prices, wireless USB and above all the A fair hostess presents a Samsung SGH-G 400 multimedia mobile phone with move towards more user-friendtouchscreen at the CeBIT 2008 trade fair in Hanover. ly applications in the hardware new business contacts.' and software sector. Germany and France marked the start of Amid the sharp displays and booths offering CeBIT with the German-French ICT Summit,

From L to R: Premier of Lower Saxony Christian Wulff, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, President of Bitkom (German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media) August-Wilhelm Scheer, and CEO of US computer giant Microsoft Steve Ballmer pose for photographers prior to the official opening ceremony of the CeBIT 2008 trade fair at Hanover's Congress Centre. France is this year's partner country of the CeBIT.

which takes the two countries into a new era of high-tech cooperation. On the previous evening CeBIT had been officially opened by German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The governments of both countries emphasized their determination to develop their cooperation further - not least in the whole area of ICT. CeBIT gave a valuable impetus to the dialogue between Germany and France. A focal theme of the first few Visitors test the new Asus Eee PC on the CeBIT computer fair in the northern days of the show was 'Green IT'. German town of Hanover. Green issues are in evidence everywhere at CeBIT. The need for greener ing them to stands where they could learn technology is the subject of intense discussion about issues relating to their work and make

up the latest gadgets and gizmos at the CeBIT trade and technology fair in Hanover, Germany, the agenda for the international industry gathering has given a nod to concerns about climate debate worldwide. Many of the 5,845 exhibitors from 77 countries are touting developments such as servers that use less electricity, and data centers that don't emit any carbon dioxide.

Highlights AMD's new "Puma" mobile platform, destined to compete with Intel's Centrino, was officially unveiled at CeBIT 2008. It's based around a revamped processor design, codenamed Griffin and making its debut in the new 65nm Turion X2 Ultra processor. AMD also announced initial 45nm "Shanghai" and "Deneb" Quad-Core processors are running server and client operating systems.

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Flare Report

German Chancellor Angela Merkel uses a "SonyEricsson" mobile phone as she tours the CeBIT 2008 trade fair.

Microsoft's Surface was demoed. Their 30in touchscreen table allows people to move objects on the screen with their fingers. Sheraton's booking service was demoed; a mock credit card was placed on the table. A number of options spiralled out of it, allowing book-in information, local guides or hotel services. Tapping the hotel services button brings up a jukebox with the screen filled with album covers, with songs once again selected with a tap of the finger. Customers who want to buy the song can then place their Wi-Fi enabled MP3 player - such as Micrsoft's Zune, of course - on to the Surface Vodafone is trialling a new method of picture search. The demonstrated system, called Otello, allows the user to take a picture of "anything from an historical building to a CD cover", which will then "return information relevant to the picture to the phone." Vodafone is preparing a trial with a German newspaper that will allow readers to find out further information about certain articles - including audio and video extras. Supermarket shopper aide: Software maker SAP was showing off a supermarket shopper aide that works through a mobile phone.

he main focus for Ericsson's activities were Multimedia, Full Service Broadband and Managed Services offering. Full Service Broadband will make it possible to give subscribers what they want - any broadband service on any device, anywhere. Our business builders showed tailored demonstrations proving that the 3GPP track of HSPA evolution and LTE is the most cost-effective way to offer broadband everywhere and to anyone. Multimedia solutions make it easy to offer TV anywhere, music downloads and sharing of pictures and video. Consumers want to be in the "driver's seat" when it comes to multimedia

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Shoppers enter their grocery list onto a mobile phone. On entering a supermarket the phone downloads an inventory list and an aisle map. Inside the supermarket, the application becomes an on-the-fly checkout system, scanning in the price of

Event

items lifted off the shelves and then charging them to a nominated account. Powerline Networking Prototype Capable of 400Mb/sec: Devolo is demonstrating a powerline networking prototype capable of 400Mb/sec. It allows devices to be connected to an ethernet network over the home's electrical wiring. Despite the 400Mb/sec tag, Devolv admits that the real world throughput is likely to be around 180Mb/sec. The TomTom GO 730 and GO 930 feature IQ routes technology which decides on the best journey route using the average speed other users have achieved in the past, rather than simply looking at posted speed limits and road types and "guessing", as was previously the case. TomTom says the information has been collected anonymously from millions of TomTom users and covers 6.2 billion miles of roads. PePWave was showing their new PolePoint Wi-Fi AP and Central Management System. It consists of two core components, the PolePoint AP, featuring High transmit power (up to 400mW), virtual AP (16 SSIDs), QoS, and wide-temperature support coupled with their PePWave Central Management System (PCMS) - a web2.0 application hosted by PePWave, that eliminates client software installation. As at the time of going into press, CeBIT is under its way, and there is lot to come in the latter half; we may cover that in upcoming




issue.

People walk past the IBM exhibit during the first public day at the CeBIT computer fair in the northern German town of Hanover.

experiences. They want to be able to create their own content, share it with others and decide what to view and when to do it. Our solutions will make this happen with full operator control over service roll-out and payments. Managed Services will help you focus on the core business and strengthen subscriber relations. Stay in touch with subscriber needs and launch new services in just a few months. It doesn't really matter what the main challenges for your network operation are, be it cost reduction, network quality or access to new technologies. Ericsson is the industry

leader in Managed Services and provides cost efficient operations with predictable network performance.






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Pictorial

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Indian models pose with mobile phones on a stand at The Mobile Asia 2008 exibition in New Delhi. The exhibition which is being held in the Indian capital, claims to be India's biggest consumer mobile event and hopes to attract some 300,000 visitors over the course of the event.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a mobile phone she has been photographed with during her tour on the CeBIT computer fair in the northern German town of Hanover.

Indian models pose with mobile phones on a stand at The Mobile Asia 2008 exibition in New Delhi.

Stephen Chen of Taiwanese company E-Lead presents a foldable laptop with an integrated navigation system at the CeBIT 2008 trade fair.

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A model displays the new navigation device 'TOMTOM Go 930 T' during first public day at the CeBIT computer fair in the northern German town of Hanover.

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Anand Parthasarathy

The portable phone is emerging as the central device in people's lives. Anand Parthasarathy was at the cellular industry's biggest annual event, the Mobile World Congress, to catch its latest trends At home, at work and at play, we will be in tune with our surroundings - and we will adjust accordingly", says Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. "New services will touch time, place and location - and they will take our mobility into a new realm of possibility. In the process, they will redefine the Internet itself, free it from the desktop, making it more personal, more contextaware…. in the end, context is the key." Kallasvuo is President and CEO of Nokia, the Finnish player whose products straddle the world of portable communications: four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide is a Nokia (this is more than the combined sales of the next three top-selling brands). It is, therefore, inevitable that Nokia's corporate vision of the mobile world's direction, in some ways, sets the agenda for the entire industry. Agenda is one thing - implementation, another. The GSM Association's Mobile World Congress is the premier gathering of the cellular phone business, attracting 1,300 players, over 55,000 visitors - and 230 company heads. And this year's event held in Barcelona, Spain, in mid-February, was proof enough that there were many exciting and different roads (and not a few unexplored byways) that the portable communications industry is taking to reach a common destination. Together, it seemed, governments and corporates could deliver on the promise of connecting the world's 5 billion people who remain untouched by any kind of communication technology. After cameras and FM radios, it seemed, location sensors - mainly harnessing the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation network - would turn out to be the Next Big Thing to go into the mobile phone in 2008. GPS navigation is nothing new: Garmin, Nuvi and Tom are

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recognised brand names in the car navigation business. But GPS-enabled phones, which have been a costly niche item, may soon crash into the mainstream. Why? Because semiconductor designers such as CSR, SiRF and NXP have succeeded in creating GPS system-on-a-chip solutions, squeezing all associated electronics

over a few cm and both have created mobile phone solutions marrying NFC to cellular functionality, creating a new and interesting device category. Fuelled by compellingly priced chips like these, handset makers have already begun offering GPS-enabled phones that have enabled

Clockwise from top left: Using the Nokia 6210 Pedestrian Navigator to reach Barcelona's highest point; at fingertip: Video chip for mobile phone allows images to be blown up on a large screen. It had key contributions from nVidia engineers in Hyderabad; SiRF Technology India's MD, Ashutosh Pande, shows, in Barcelona, a portable media player reference design fuelled by the SiRFprima location engine designed in India; Nokia's Vice-President, Alex Lambeck, holds up entry-level phones for India while a volunteer unveils versions of Spice's People's Phone.

on a single slab of silicon while sharply reducing the power requirements. The result: adding GPS navigational functionality to a mobile phone adds less than $3 to the cost. At Barcelona, the Cambridge-UK-based CSR demonstrated its e -(for enhanced)-GPS silicon, a single chip that combines GPS with the company's traditional Bluetooth offering. Fuelled by technology from its Noida, India development base, SiRF unveiled its multifunction location platform, SiRFPrima combining 2D and 3D graphics, multimedia processing and compatibility with both GPS and the upcoming European Galileo system. SiRF India's Managing Director, Ashutosh Pande, showed this writer a reference design for a portable media player with the SiRFPrima chip that a few China-based original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) were currently turning into products for release this year. The chip was also going into digital still and video cameras, Pande said, adding context and location to every photo or clip. The Philips-founded NXP showed the GNS 7560, claimed to be the smallest, lowest powered GPS solution. NXP and Sony jointly developed the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, for contact-less information exchange

the service provider to add value by tying up with local map providers. In a canny exploitation of the mobile phone's primary role as a personal device, Nokia used the Barcelona event to preview what it calls pedestrian navigation: putting GPS into an upcoming handset, the 6210 Navigator, even while it optimised its Maps 2.0 offering for use by a walker rather than a car driver. The difference may seem small - it is, in fact, palpable and significant, as I found out when I borrowed one of these new phones and used its navigation features to locate and reach Barcelona's highest point, the Miramar Hotel, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, from the Congress venue in Placa Espanya. The 6210, interestingly, adds a compass (in an electronic avatar) to the GPS receiver. This is useful for a pedestrian, since the screen orients itself constantly as one zigzags over the road, guiding you back to course, if you head in the wrong direction. I did the return journey by TukTuk - the name they give in Europe to the autorickshaw that was brought over from the Netherlands especially for this event. The 6210 works equally well in a vehicle - except that the software, unless re-primed, will assume you are on foot and will ignore 'no entry' and other vehicular

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restrictions. GPS phones are likely to remain relatively higher priced items to start with, with price tags of $300 and more; but what about the 'bottom of the pyramid'? India is to the global mobile phone market, what Nokia is to handsets, a giant. If the world buys 30 million new phones in a month, 7 million of them are sold in India. An interesting bit of statistics published during the Congress by Informa Telecoms and Media, UK, showed that India is now the world's largest mobile phone market, going by net additions every year (China, Pakistan, Indonesia are the next three). Significantly, India is the world's only market that is expected to notch up more mobile sales (estimated at 89.83 million) in 2008 compared to

even further into the 'connected' world, a consortium consisting of Singapore phone maker Jurong Technologies and distributor Brightstar; German chip maker Infineon and Israeli mobile software provider Tjat Systems has come together to create the Sirius Smart Entry Phone (SEP), bringing the benefits of Net connectivity to the cost-conscious market. Tjat's Chief Product Officer, Oleg Golobrodsky, explained that the browser-based client-less messaging solution will enable music and picture downloads for the first time in an under-$25 phone. If all these seemed to have India in their sights, Indian innovation seemed to traverse the reverse path to global markets: Shyam Telecom is now a regular presence at such events, with a

After cameras and FM radios, it seemed, location sensors would turn out to be the Next Big Thing to go into the mobile phone 2007. That is because penetration is still only around 17 per cent and there is lot more room for growth. That makes aggressively-priced entry-level phones an important category for handset makers looking to sell in these high-growth countries. The single chip phone solution is old news now and has been used by mobile manufacturers to address the mass market in India with Rs 2,000 handsets. At Barcelona, Nokia unveiled two new entrylevel phones targeting India - the 2600 cameraFM radio phone priced at Rs 3,499 and the 1209 bringing colour for the first time to an entry-level offering at Rs 1,800. They were not alone in aiming for the broad base of first-time users: One of the surprises at the Congress was the huge glitzy presence of Spice Telecom, an operator whose map in India covers just two States: Karnataka and Punjab. In Barcelona, Spice launched the People's Phone, a radically simplified India-designed product that dispenses with a screen for those who just want

steady market for its signal enhancement offerings. Bharti Telesoft, strengthened by its recent acquisition of mobile instant message specialist Jataayu, had a string of offerings that helped networks make the transition from 2G to 3G and beyond in a painless manner. Indiagames and its global arm IG Fun tied up shortly before Barcelona with Canadian Magmic, to bring games based on the hit Anglo-US serial, 'The Office', to a world audience. FlyTxt, a UK player with strong development muscle based in India, used the Congress to expand the reach of its slate of mobile marketing and advertising solutions under the Neon brand. And Airtel - whose founder-chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal was honoured with the GSMA Chairman's Award - saw its mobile billing and recharge solution, created by the Bangalore-based mChek, recognised as the world's 'Best Billing and Customer Care Solution'. Elsewhere, the Congress was the launching pad for many of tomorrow's exciting mobile extensions: Dolby Labs launched Dolby Mobile,

Mobile broadband was high on the agenda at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

to talk and send text messages. An interesting variant of this $20 device is one with a Braille keyboard for the visually challenged. The market for Spice, says its Chairman, Dr B.K. Modi, is from Iraq to Indonesia. Same market might also lap up the other Spice offering: the Movie Phone with a 2.8 inch screen; 3.5 hours of video content storable on a tiny disk, and a TV-out connection to view the contents on a larger screen, if required. And to help entry-level users move up the value chain

'surround sound on the move' with high frequency enhancers and a mono to stereo converter for handsets so that the mobile TV experience had the sound quality of a theatre. Also in the TV arena, Alcatel-Lucent with handset maker Sagem and satellite operators such as Eutelsat, demonstrated the first ever transmission in the S band of satellite mobile TV using the Digital Video Broadcast DVB-SH standard. Channels like CNBC, Nicleodeon and Canal 300 could be seen, direct via satellite, on

a hand-held phone. Visual computing specialist nVidia showed what it called "the world's lowest power, high-definition computer-on-a-chip." The APX 2500, which allows 3-D and HD TV and video on Windows Mobile phones, saw 'significant development work' at the company's Hyderabad campus, says the Product PR Manager, Varun Dubey. I saw a clip from an nVidia-fuelled mobile phone retain stunning video quality even when projected on a 36-inch LCD screen. And in the undeclared race with WiMAX, mobile players such as Ericsson demonstrated the next step beyond 3G and HSPA (high speed packet access): the LTE or Long Term Evolution. This has download speeds of a typical 100 MBPS and a maximum of 300 MBPS, though Ericsson has successfully achieved 160 MBPS. Which emboldened a writer in the daily Mobile Congress bulletin to ask: WiMAX: Catching on or False Dawn? A billion mobile phones were sold in 2007. A million are sold everyday worldwide. Twenty years after 15 telecom operators came together in Copenhagen to create a global standard for portable cellular telephony, the goal of a mobile planet is still some years away. But in Barcelona this month, it seemed a doable goal. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw a number of new buzzwords bandied about - at least some of them likely to fuel tomorrow's telecom trends. Here is a help list for those who want to appear well cued in matters mobile: Voice Dialling (also known as Voice to Screen). Text messages will soon be spoken, says Steve Chambers, President of Nuance. You will soon be able to say 'Search Web' to open a phone browser and then say your search term. Voice Dialling will be welcomed by car owners who can now dial a number by the owner's name, speaking it out, and never touch the keypad. Geo tagging: Taking a photo with your camera phone, then having the GPS receiver 'tag' where on earth you took it. V2IP Voice plus Video on Internet Protocol; interactive two-way real-time multimedia on the phone ('VOIP is so 'yesterday'. Now I have V2IP'." On-device Portal; A browser resident on your mobile. Companies such as Surf Kitchen are making this happen, caching a lot of content to reduce online time. '3-Screens': A new jargon for the large economy size on your wall; the medium size on your desktop and the small size on your phone - all sharing the same digital content. Tridget: A device that is dependent on the network for all its data as well as its controls. The




Apple iPod is the archetype tridget. 41

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Franco Vairani, a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks over models of the City Car, a collapsible, electric, battery powered car he designed for his thesis at MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A man tests glasses made by a Danish company Mobintech that connect to the phone, which when worn by a viewer give the impression of watching a 30-inch (76-centimetre) television at a distance of two metres at the Mobile world congress in Barcelona.

A member of the media displays an example of a picture of Mas Selamat Kastari being sent out to members of the public on their mobile phones by telecommunications comapanies to its subscribers as part of a nationwide manhunt effort in Singapore.

An Afghan man works on a computer at an Internet Café in the city of Kandahar province, Afghanistan. In an Internet age, al-Qaida prizes geek jihadis as much as would-be suicide bombers and gunmen.

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A GPS phone called the Nuvifone by US-based manufacturer Garmin on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The biggest handset manufacturers and GPS (global positioning system) specialists have begun building handsets with personal navigation software, planning routes and guiding pedestrians with detailed digital maps.

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Flare Report

Finding a hobby is a great way to spend time, to be creative, and to exercise your brain. Some hobbies are a great way to relax after a hectic day. The web is a useful resource either to find a new hobby or expand your knowledge with a current one. Here are several sites that might inspire you to find a hobby Radio Operators

Knitters

is www.audubon.org.

Long before the internet was created, the amateur radio network was the way people from all over the world could connect. Amateur radio operators created vast social networks by talking long distances to other radio enthusiasts, making distant friends and exchanging calling cards. It is this linkage of radio enthusiasts that is ready to help communication flow in case of a disaster or weather emergency. The National Association for Amateur Radio has an informative website with lots of news and information, plus info on getting started or finding a chapter in your area: www.arrl.org.

Knitting is having a revival right now, there are several magazines on the topic. If you have forgotten how to knit and want to take up the hobby again there are several websites that will give you illustrated instructions and lots of free projects that are easy to start like www.learntoknit.com/ or www.craftown.com.

Gardeners

All of us enjoy getting out in the country to breath the fresh air; adding bird watching to this

Most of us have a back yard or a deck we can put a few flower pots on. Perhaps you would like a few more indoor plants. It is relaxing to plant something green and watch it grow. At the website www.garden.org you can find the zone you live in and all types of advice and resources to find plants that do well in your zone plus get ideas about adding more greenery to your life. Whatever your interest or hobby is, you will

activity might be a fun. To get started all you need is a small pair of inexpensive binoculars for just those times you see something interesting fly by through the back yard or on a hike. When you are driving it is fun to stop, look at the view and try to find a few birds flying about. There are lots of great sites, books and even software for your PDA to carry with you, a good place to start

be able to find information about it and more on the internet. The Web is a great source of information, instruction and inspiration for both finding a new hobby or enhancing an existing one. And who knows; you might find a social network or create your own blog, make new friends, start a group, or share your knowledge with others




along the way.

Bird Watchers

Collectors Are you a collector? Perhaps it is toy trains or salt shakers; maybe it is baseball cards or matchbox cars, fishing lures or old postcards. Collectors.org is a great website to get collecting information. The primary purpose is to provide free information for collecting clubs, collectors and the antiques, art and collectibles industry: collectors.org.

Quilters This is a great site for a quilter. If you need some ideas, or perhaps you are looking for a new block pattern, this is a no-frills site with hundreds of free block patterns and directions. I visit here often to get inspiration and new ideas: www.quilterscache.com.

ore than a third of mobile phone owners in China - the largest mobile market use their handsets to listen to music, more than in Britain or the United States, a study showed.

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Some 34.8 percent reported they listened to mobile music every month compared with 20 percent in Spain, 18.9 percent in Britain and 5.7 percent in the United States, according to M:Metrics, a research firm that monitors mobile media usage. M:Metrics was founded in 2004. It collects data from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The study surveyed 5,163 Chinese mobile subscribers aged 13-54 via telephone in seven major cities of the country. Compared with users in the United States and Europe, Chinese consumers use their phones much less to check on their email or to send photos and videos.

Photo Sharing Over 30 percent in Italy, Spain and Britain use their phones to send or receive photos and videos, and only half as many do so in China. Users in the United States lead the poll in email usage with 11.6 percent compared with nine percent in Spain and Britain, but only 2.5 percent in China. The firm also found that while some 30 percent of those polled owned Nokia handsets, giving the company a substantial lead

in the Chinese market, owners of Sony Ericsson handsets were a driving force in using mobile media. M:Metrics said global handset brands such as Motorola , Nokia and Samsung significantly surpassed native brands such as China Mobile in terms of being used to get mobile content. China is expected to issue 3G licenses before the Olympics this year, but some predict licenses will not be handed out until 2009, as kinks in its homegrown 3G standard, TDSCDMA, are smoothed out.

Young Users Just like in the European and US markets, 18-34 year-olds are the biggest consumers of mobile content in China, accounting for 64.6 percent of those who accessed news and information via their mobile browser, M:Metrics said.






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he latest figures from the Pakistani telecoms regulator show that the mobile market in Pakistan grew to 78.74m customers at the end of January. The figure for monthly net additions of 1.86m was 17% down on the January 2007 total, and also represented the second lowest figure for two years, the lowest being the 1.52m recorded last October. Mobilink continues to dominate the market with 30.89m customers at the end of January, but it has lost market share in every month since February 2006 and January's 0.6pp fall saw it hit 39.2%, its lowest percentage since 2002. Pakistan Telecom Mobile (U-Fone) remained in second place with 16.44m customers at the end of January. However, in the last 6 months Telenor Pakistan has narrowed the deficit considerably, from 3.5m at the end of July to just over 1m at the end of January. In terms of market share, January saw Telenor just 1.4pp behind at 19.5%, compared to a 5.8pp gap at the same point in 2007. In fact, Telenor was in fourth place behind Warid in January 2007; a year later, Telenor had 15.35m to Warid's 13.38m. Telenor took 40.6% of

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Pakistan's total net additions in January with 754k, over double the next best figure of 374k, recorded by China Mobile subsidiary Paktel. In terms of proportionate growth, however, Paktel was by far the fastest growing in January

with an 18.9% increase in customer numbers. Paktel's performance in the past three months

has been extraordinary: it has managed to more than double its subscriber base since the end of October, from 1.06m to 2.36m. November's figure of 721k new connections - a staggering 68.2% monthly growth rate - was particularly impressive, and pushed national net additions over 3m for the first time since the start of monthly reporting in June 2005. The sixth operator in Pakistan is Pakcom, which had 0.32m customers at the end of January, which has had its licence revoked by the national regulator PTA Pakistan as a result of its failure to keep up with licence payments. Despite November's bumper crop, growth seems to be slowing in Pakistan. The fourth quarter of 2007 saw a 9.8% growth rate, the lowest since Q2 03 and the tenth successive decline in quarterly growth. Moreover, annual growth of 58.7% was less than half the 123.8% recorded in 2006. With penetration at 45.0% at the end of 2007, there is plenty of potential for further growth, but it seems unlikely that 2008 will be able to match the 28.44m new connec




tions recorded in 2007.

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Telecom

esearchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated that liquids embedded with nanoparticles show enhanced performance and stability when exposed to electric fields. The finding could lead to new types of miniature camera lenses, cell phone displays, and other microscale fluidic devices. "This study may open up a new vista for using nanofluids in microscale and nanoscale actuator device applications," said Theodorian Borca-Tasciuc, a professor of mechanical engineering at Rensselaer, who led the research project. The manipulation of small volumes of liquid is critical for fluidic digital display devices, optical devices, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such as lab-on-chip analysis systems. Most research into such systems has been conducted with regular liquids, but not nanofluids, which are liquids embedded with different nanoparticles. Nanofluids have been shown to exhibit some attractive properties, including enhanced heat transfer and capillary properties, as compared with regular, or pure, liquids. Borca-Tasciuc's team placed droplets of water-based solutions containing bismuth telluride nanoparticles onto a Teflon-coated silicon wafer. When an electric field was applied to the droplet, the researchers observed a strong change in the angle at which the droplet contact-

ed the wafer. This change was much higher than that observed in liquids without the nanoparticles when tested under the same conditions. "You use the same electrical field, but you get more change in shape with the nanofluid. We know the nanoparticles are critical in this process because without them the effect is much

nce a feature of computers only, the hard disk drive (HDD) is turning up these days as the memory of devices as diverse as mobile phones and digital video players. The reason is not hard to find: price. Enormous hard drives holding 500 gigabytes (GB) of data can be bought at consumer electronics marts for little more than 100 dollars net, meaning a gigabyte of storage only costs 20 to 50 cents. Juergen Rakow, proprietor of Fukato, a German importer and packager of computer products including TFT flat-screen displays, said at a briefing: "Ten years ago, I thought computer hard drives would be almost dead within a decade. "But it hasn't turned out that way at all. You're now seeing them in sat-nav devices in cars and installed in TV sets to record TV shows." Rakow, who argues that consumers have an insatiable urge to collect and save things, has begun marketing external disk drives, the booksized modules that can be plugged into a desktop or laptop computer to extend its storage capacity.

Surveys show that in October 2006, just 2 per cent of external disk drives had a capacity of 500 gigabytes or more. In October 2007, that figure had risen to 33 percent. Sales of hard disk drives continue to gain, and their capacity continues to far outstrip flash

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Flare Report

The contact angle of a droplet of nanofluid solution changes when exposed to an electric field.

less strong," Borca-Tasciuc said. The ability to easily change the contact angle of droplets of nanofluids has potential applications for efficiently moving liquids in microsystems, creating new methods of focusing lenses in miniature cameras, or cooling computer chips. Borca-Tasciuc also envisions the research enabling new fully integrated micro- and nanoscale heat transfer systems that will not require a pump. "Our proof of concept really opens up many new exciting possibilities," he said. Borca-Tasciuc said his investigations into nanofluids are driven by sheer curiosity, and fostered by a strong interdisciplinary collaboration

drives, the semiconductor-based electronic storage devices that have often been billed as the way of the future. Many shoppers may not know exactly what

with Rensselaer Materials Science and Engineering Professor Ganapathiraman Ramanath. "At first, we were curious to see what would happen if we introduced charged nanostructures - such as the ones we synthesize for exploring new cooling strategies in nanodevices - to the process of liquid wetting. But what started as a single, one-off experiment has now mushroomed into an exciting new research topic and expanded the scope of our collaboration," Ramanath said. The research article, titled "Electrowetting on dielectric-actuation of microdroplets of aqueous bismuth telluride nanoparticle suspensions," was published in a recent issue of the journal Nanotechnology. Along with Borca-Tasciuc and Ramanath, coauthors of the paper include Rensselaer postdoctoral research associate Arup Purkayastha, and graduate student Raj K. Dash. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation through the Interconnect Focus




Center.

they plan to do with so much storage capacity, but buy on the principle that you can never have too much memory. Consumers who have tried home video recording often get hooked and want to upgrade. Once families have squabbled over how to use 12 or 15 hours of disk space to record TV programmes, they see nothing odd about buying 100 or 200 hours of memory. Small-format drives are also a common feature on many new products such as digital audio players on display at the CeBIT trade show from March 4 to 9 in Hanover, Germany. The first hard drives showed up in mobile phones made by Samsung and Nokia in 2005. These very tiny drives, sealed against dust, are barely bigger than a postage stamp. A microdrive is less than 43 millimetres long, and the so-called 0.85-inch drive is just 32 millimetres long. Like their larger cousins, they can save video, audio, photographs or plain




office files.

Cover Story

iracles of network world are evaluating new features of internet with each passing day. World's e-commerce industry values almost 700 billion US dollars annually out of which call centre industry shares over 50 billion US dollars with 30% growth rate each year. Growing economies are putting their finest efforts to emerge as major locations for IT enabled businesses such as call centers, customer support centers. A country like Pakistan, has its best chance to outplay others, particularly with the present resources that are most suitable for outsourcing industry such as lower input costs, reasonably good telecom and internet infrastructure, trained English-speaking workforce and a favorable time zone differential vis-avis the US. Despite of all these supporting features we may find plenty of examples where the BPO organizations in Pakistan are either closed or soon they will be closed due to various reasons. TouchStone Communication (Private) Limited is one out of almost 70 operating call centers in Pakistan. Incorporated in year 2003 and more than 600 permanent employees TouchStone was successfully serving European and US clients since its inception, until Mr. Tom Slone, an American citizen and also happens to be the Chairman and CEO of TouchStone Communication announced the closure of the company to its employees and clients abroad. This situation will defiantly do the negative with call centre industry and make it face heavy damages in terms of economy and image as well. TouchStone Communication Pakistan is a subsidiary of TouchStone Communication II, LLC America. Mr. FarukhAslam, who is also the direc-

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Zubair Ahmed Kasuri

tor of TouchStone Pakistan, holds twenty percent shares in TouchStone America. Along with Mr. Farukh Aslam there are nine stakeholders including Tom Slone that share TouchStone America's ownership. Dispute between Farukh Aslam and Tom Slone began last year when Slone tried to remove Mr. Farukh Aslam from his director's

Mr. Tom Slone, who is involved in the fraudulent activities and disgracing not only Mr. Farukh Aslam (a share holder of TouchStone) but Pakistan's image. position. Slone also wanted to acquire Aslam's shares in order to retain the position of majority stake holder. After an intensive journalistic investigation, Flare found few secret documents that revealed Tom's high level government contacts, and the

TouchStone Communication (Private) Limited is one out of almost 70 operating call centers in Pakistan. Incorporated in year 2003 and more than 600 permanent employees TouchStone was successfully serving European and US clients since its inception, until Mr. Tom Slone, an American citizen and also happens to be the Chairman and CEO of TouchStone Communication announced the closure of the company to its employees and clients abroad. This situation will defiantly do the negative with call centre industry and make it face heavy damages in terms of economy and image as well

Cover Story

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way he utilized them in order to remove Farukh Aslam from the company, and took over the control of call centre. In fact Tom Slone threatened Pakistan's Government that he will shout against the law and order situation of the country in the west if his demands were not fulfilled. In a letter written to President Pervez Musharraf, dated December 30, 2007, Mr. Tom Slone dictated "We will call our more than 20 U.S. and U.K. clients informing them that law and order conditions in Pakistan make it impossible to continue Operations". Mr. Slone wrote these words about the country from where he earned millions of dollars. In the same letter he said "We will meet our approximately 600 employees and notify them that their jobs will be permanently lost" Not only this, Mr. Slone tried his every possible source to remove Mr. Farukh Aslam from his position of Director of the company. In a letter dated November 23, 2007 written to Chairman Senate and the President, with a reference of a friend of Mohammad Mian Soomro, Mr. Slone demanded "Physically remove of Farukh Aslam

and his guards from the premises of TouchStone Communication" (the person who is director of the company and holds twenty percent shares as well.) In another paragraph Mr. Slone demanded "Freeze the bank account of DBL, Farukh's personal computer business", it merits mentioning here that DBL is not owned by Mr. Farukh Aslam, and rather he paid this money to close the liabilities of 3 million PKR. It seems Tom succeeded in blackmailing the high level staff in Islamabad police and the Government. Afterwards he thanked them all in a letter dated January 02, 2008, he states "Islamabad police force worked tirelessly and with particular skill", this shows the changing words of a person who just wanted to remove Mr. Farukh Aslam from the company to retain his shares. Slone thanked many government officials by their names including, Shahid Nadeem Balouch (DIG), Syed Kaleem Imam (SSP), Zubair Sheikh (DSP), Munawar Khan who is in elite commando's force. All these letters demonstrate the government's high level involvement in the case without hearing the Farukh Aslam's stance. Demonstrating favoritism, Tom soon kicked off 32 employees who shouted the loyalty for

Farukh Aslam. The workforce was being threatened by Tom Slone at last saw a black day when they were disallowed to enter company office. Mr. Slone feared that these employees were loyal with the company and its legitimate owner, Mr. Farukh Aslam. While speaking with an IT analyst he said that this decision by Tom Slone is a direct hit on the labor's rights and the economy of the country, particularly when employees were dismissed without clearing their dues. Khizar Iqbal, one of the victims told 'Flare' that he was stopped at company's main gate by the armed persons, who didn't allow him to enter his office. On inquiring, the armed people told him to leave the premises and do not claim or shout for anything, including the salary. He said that he had a very good repute in the company, and he was not liable to any misdeed carried out during job. He further said that Mr. Tom Slone is accused of 1.6million Rs. which were allocated for the welfare of the employees. There are other 32 such miserable families who are facing this merciless stance by Tom Slone. Other employees, said that this brutal attitude will not be tolerated and they will use their reserved right to contact labor court. They told that the Tom Slone took over the company's management for his personal greed. They said that he was leading the company without any rules or regulation. Dismissed employees revealed that Tom Slone took away about 1.6 million rupees that were in provident fund account. Such dismissals are threatening the sense of security in TouchStone Communication. After kicking off 32 employees and dodging the legitimate owners of the company, Tom Slone seemed not contented with his efforts, as he propagated against Pakistan in US newspapers. Tom Slone, who reaped the extensive benefits of Pakistan's supporting features for outsourcing businesses for over 5 years, changed his views about our beloved country and the people and businesses. Barry Schlacter a Jewish friend of Tom Slone, who has visited Pakistan as well reports for a US Paper named as "Star Telegram" used anti-

Dispute between Farukh Aslam and Tom Slone began last year when Slone tried to remove Mr. Farukh Aslam from his director's position. Slone also wanted to acquire Aslam's shares in order to retain the position of majority stake holder. Employees of the call centre have expressed their deep concern and displeasure on the situation 49

Cover Story

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Tom soon kicked off 32 employees who shouted the loyalty for Farukh Aslam. The workforce was being threatened by Tom Slone at last saw a black day when they were disallowed to enter company office. He feared that these employees were loyal with its legitimate owner, Mr. Farukh Aslam

The pieces of writings are the extract of Mr. Farukh Aslam’s letter to President of Pakistan to seek justice as he is a stake holder of TouchStone. Pakistan words like "Pakistan's complicated and often corrupt, local business environment" and another place he writes "Slone described as 20 stinky goatherders". Most of these were company employees such as our janitors, teaboys, guards and drivers. Tom Slone, Jewish by religion, is showing his deep hatred for the Pakistan community, which is clearly reflected in up-given lines published in recent week. Tom is using his ill-resources in US media to spread detest against Pakistan. Tom Slone who had been earning millions of dollars from Pakistan is now accusing them of corrupt nature, just to spread hatred. Mr. Farukh Aslam, the director of the company and major stake holder told "Flare" that he had written a letter to President of Pakistan, Ms. Anne W. Patterson, US Ambassador in Islamabad, IG Police, and other SECP officials, informing them the situation Tom has created. Farukh Aslam was of the view that none of the offices mentioned above did any justice rather, they helped Tom in looting by selling many of the company assets. He voiced against the con50

cerned authorities who are not helping him to rescue his personal investment and the future of hundred of employees. Farukh said that Tom Slone, who has high level contacts in Pakistan government, is utilizing his contacts to make fake documents in order to restrain the legitimate stakeholders from acting or taking any decision in the company. Mr. Farukh further said that Mr. Tom Slone is not only playing with the future of TouchStone employees but also the economy of Pakistan. Along with, his deeds will certainly do a negative role with the image of outsourcing industry in Pakistan. More than 20 clients in

Few secret documents revealed how Tom utilized the high level government contacts in order to remove Farukh Aslam from the company, and took over the control of call centre. In fact Tom Slone threatened Pakistan's Government that he will shout against the law and order situation of the country in the west if his demands were not fulfilled United States and UK are being informed by Tom that TouchStone Pakistan can not operate due to security reasons in the country.

Mr. Aslam said that Tom, who is himself an employee of TouchStone, is not lawful to carry out such a closure of the company. This may be the only scenario available in history when an employee removed director from his position

instead of following his directions. He is defiantly bypassing the rules by using his high level contacts in the government. Documents reveals that Tom is nor the director neither stakes holder in the company. Mr. Tom Slone is not only playing with the future of TouchStone employees but also the economy of Pakistan. Along with, his deeds will certainly do a negative role with the image of outsourcing industry in Pakistan. Tom, who is himself an employee of TouchStone, is not lawful to carry out such a closure of a company. This may be the only scenario available in history when an employee removed director from his position instead of following his directions. He is defiantly bypassing the rules by using his high level contacts in the government. Employees of the call centre have expressed their deep concern and displeasure on the situation. They were of a view that Government should stop this closure in order to keep the foreign investment coming into the country. They further said that their future is on high risk, and Tom will be only responsible. It is clear that a Mr. Tom Slone is trying hard to dismiss his Pakistani partner and take full control of the company. Now, it is duty of our government to take necessary action and solve this dispute which is not only a threat to foreign invest




ment but also disgrace for the country.

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Informative

Nokia N96

Nokia 6124 Classic

Size Dimensions 103 x 55 x 18 mm, 92 cc, Weight 125g Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.8 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), Monophonic, True Tones, MP3, Customization, Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall, Call records Detailed, max 30 days, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), 16 GB internal memory, 128MB RAM, 256MB storage memory Data GPRS Class 32, 107 / 64.2 kbps, HSCSD Yes, EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps; DTM Class 11, 177 kbps, 3G, HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port Yes, USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB Features OS Symbian OS 9.3, S60 rel. 3.2, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS reader, Games Downloadable, Colors Black, Camera 5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, video(VGA 30fps), flash; secondary VGA videocall camera Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS function, DVB-H TV broadcast receiver, Dual slide design, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA player, 3.5 mm audio output jack, TV out, Stereo FM Radio with RDS, Organizer, Office document viewer, T9, Push to talk , Voice dial/memo, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 950 mAh (BL-5F), Stand-by Up to 220h, Talk time Up to 3 h 40 min Design: 8.0

Size Dimensions 105 x 46 x 15 mm, 66cc, Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2 inches, Downloadable wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, AAC, Customization Download Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall, Call records Detailed, max 30 days, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), 35 MB of user memory, 64 MB SDRAM, 128 MB ROM , ARM 11, 369 MHz CPU, Data GPRS Class 11, HSCSD Yes, 43.2 kbps, EDGE Class 32, 296 / 177.6 kbits 3G HSDPA, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No USB Yes, miniUSB Features OS Symbian OS v9.2, S60 rel. 3.1, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging Browser, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, Games Yes + Downloadable Colors BlackWhite, Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video, flash; secondary videocall camera, Video calling, Java MIDP 2.0, FM stereo radio, Push to talk MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, Office applications (Excel, PDF, Powerpoint, Word, Zip), Voice memo, T9, Calculator, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion Design: Features: Performance:

7.3 6.8 7.4

Nokia N78 Size Dimensions 113 x 49 x 15.1 mm, 76.5 cc, Weight 101.8g Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches, Downloadable themes Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes, Stereo speakers, Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall, Call records Detailed, max 30 days, Card slot, microSD (TransFlash), hotswap, 70 MB internal memory, 96 MB SDRAM memory, ARM 11 369 MHz processor Data GPRS Class 11, 118.4 kbits, HSCSD Yes, EDGE Class 32, 296 / 177.6 kbits, 3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB Features OS Symbian OS, S60 rel. 3.2, Messaging, SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds, Games Yes + Java downloadable, Colors Black, Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, Carl Zeiss optics, video(VGA 15fps), flash; secondary CIF videocall camera, Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, Java MIDP 2.0 MP3/M4A/AAC/eAAC+/WMA player, Stereo FM radio, FM transmitter 3.5 mm audio output jack, Push to Talk, Voice command/dial, PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing, Document viewer, T9, Photo/video editor, Integrated handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-6F), Stand-by Up to 320h, Talk time

Nokia E51 Camera-free

Samsung F400

Size Dimensions 114.8 x 46 x 12 mm, 61cc, Weight 100g Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2 inches, Five-way scroll key Downloadable themes Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes, Memory Phonebook, Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall, Call records Detailed, max 30 days, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), hotswap, 130 MB user data memory, 96 MB SDRAM memory, ARM 11 369 MHz processor Data GPRS Class 32, HSCSD Yes, EDGE Class 32, 3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11g, VoIP over WLAN, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port Yes, USB Yes, v2.0 miniUSB Features OS Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, Games Downloadable, Colors Black, Silver, Camera No, Push to talk, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC/video player FM radio, Document viewer, T9, Voice command/memo, PIM including calendar, to-do list, Integrated handsfree, Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email, Exchange mail Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1070 mAh ( BP-6MT), Stand-by Up to 310h, Talk time Up to 4 h 20 min

Size Dimensions 103 x 48 x 16.9 mm Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches, Dual slide design Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photo call, Call records, 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls, Card slot, microSD (TransFlash), 24 MB embedded memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G, HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email Browser, WAP 2.0/xHTML, Games Yes + downloadable, Camera 3 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, video, Java MIDP 2.0 MP3/AAC/eACC/WMA player, Music recognition, FM radio with RDS, T9 Picture editing, Organizer, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion

Design: Features: Performance:

52

Japan's electronics giant Sony employee demonstrates the smart card reader Felica Port and a mobile phone handset containing IC chip, enable it to pay for video on demand service at the IC card exhibition in Tokyo. Sony introduced various application to use on the company's smart card Felica.

7.3 7.4 7.4

Design: Features: Performance:

9.0 8.8 8.7

Informative

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Samsung U900 Soul Size Dimensions 105 x 49.5 x 12.9 mm, Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches, Navigation panel Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Yes, Photocall, Call records 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls Card slot, microSD (TransFlash) Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE No, 3G HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email Browser, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds Games Yes + downloadable, Colors Silver, Camera 5 MP, 2592?1944 pixels, autofocus, image stabiliser, video(QVGA), flash, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC/eACC+/WMA player FM radio with RDS, T9, Picture editing, Organizer, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion Design: Features: Performance:

8.4 8.2 8.3

Samsung G810 Size Dimensions 103 x 52.9 x 17.9 mm, Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.6 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Yes, Photocall, Call records, 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls Card slot, microSD (TransFlash), 130 MB shared memory, 330 MHz ARM1136 processor (TI OMAP 2430 chipset) Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth Yes v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features OS Symbian OS v9.2, Series 60 rel. 3.0, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS reader, Games Yes + downloadable, Colors Titan Grey, Camera 5 MP, 2560?1920 pixels, autofocus, video(VGA), xenon flash, 3x optical zoom, Built-in GPS receiver, Navigon GPS navigation software Camera images geo-tagging, Camera face detection, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC/AAC+/e-AAC+/WMA player, Stereo FM radio, 3.5mm audio output jack T9, Bluetooth printing, Document viewer, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo, TV out Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion Design: Features: Performance:

8.7 8.7 8.7

Samsung i200 Size Dimensions 116.7 x 50.8 x 11.8 mm, Display Type TFT, 256K colors (65K effective), Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.3 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook In internal memory, Photocall, Call records 20 dialed, 20received, 20 missed calls, Card slot microSD (TransFlash) Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE Yes, 3G HSDPA, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0, Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML (PocketIE), Games Yes Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/WMA/AAC/MPEG4 player, Mobile printing, T9, Organizer, Voice command, Voice memo Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion Design: Features: Performance:

8.3 8.0 8.2

Indian attendants on a stand at The Mobile Asia 2008 exhibition in New Delhi. The exhibition which is being held in the Indian capital, claims to be India's biggest consumer mobile event and hopes to attract some 300,000 visitors over the course of the event,

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 Size Dimensions 110 x 53 x 16.7mm, Weight 145g Display Type TFT touchscreen, 65K colors, Size 800 x 480 pixels, 3 inches Full QWERTY keyboard, Optical joystick navigation Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Composer, download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000x20 fields, Photo call, Call records, 30 received, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), 400 MB internal memory, 128MB RAM, 256MB storage memory, Qualcomm MSM7200 528MHz processor Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE Yes, 3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/HTML (IE), RSS feeds, Games Yes + downloadable, Colors Solid Black, Steel Silver, Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(VGA@30fps), flash; secondary videocall camera Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS function, Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, Motion sensor (with UI auto-rotate), TrackID music recognition, Picture editor/blogging, Organiser, T9, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo/dial Battery Standard battery, Li-Po, 1500 mAh Design: 8.5 Features: 8.4 Performance: 8.5

Sony Ericsson G900 Size Dimensions 106 x 49 x 13 mm, Weight 99g Display Type TFT touchscreen, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches Wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 x 20 fields, Photo call, Call records, 30 received, Card slot, Memory Stick Micro (M2), 160 MB internal memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE No, 3G Yes, 384 kbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0, Features OS Symbian OS, UIQ, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/HTML (Opera), RSS reader Games Yes , Colors Dark Red, Dark Brown, Camera, 5 MP,2592?1944 pixels, autofocus, image stabiliser, video, flash; secondary videocall camera,Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, Handwriting recognition, StickyNotes, TrackID music recognition, Business card scanner, Picture editor/blogging, Document reader/editor, Organiser, Stopwatch, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo/dial Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 950 mAh (BST-33), Stand-by Up to 380h Talk time Up to 12h Design: Features: Performance:

8.6 8.7 8.6

53

Informative

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Nokia 2626 Rs. 3,850

Nokia 2310 Rs. 3,450 Size Dimensions 105.4 x 43.9 x 19.1mm, Weight 85g Display Type CSTN, 65K colors, Size 96 x 68 pixels, 4 lines Themes, wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic, Customization Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 200 entries, Call records, 10 dialed, 10 received, 10 missed calls, Card slot No, 4 MB shared memory Features Messaging SMS, Browser, Games 3 - Nature Park, Snake Xenia, Bounce, Colors Red, Blue, White Languages Most major European and Asian, Camera No, FM radio, T9, Calculator, Stopwatch, Built-in, handsfree, Picture messaging Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 970 mAh (BL-5C) Stand-by Up to 400h, Talk time Up to 6h The Nokia 2310 is a sharp looking mobile phone in a beautifully compact casing. The phone comes in a choice of three colours which allows the user to choose the overall look of their new mobile phone. The colours include crisp white, vibrant orange & bright turquoise. The handset is light & compact which measures 105.4 x 43.9 x 19.05 mm & weighs 85 grams. Design: Features: Performance:

6.8 6.4 6.6

Size Dimensions 104 x 43 x 18 mm, 71cc, Weight 91g Display Type CSTN, 65K colors, Size128 x 128 pixels, 27 x 27 mm, 4-way navy key, Screensavers, themes and wallpapers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 300 entries, Call records 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls, Card slot No 2 MB user memory Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, Games Phantom Spider, Glamour Pinball + downloadable, order now, Colors Fiery Red, Spatial Blue, Energetic Copper, WhiteNavy, Languages Major European and Asia-Pacific languages, Camera No FM radio, Java MIDP 2.0, T9, Calendar, Calculator with currency converter, Clothing and shoe size converter, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 970 mAh (BL-5C) Stand-by Up to 300h, Talk time Up to 3h Nokia 2626 is a colourful phone, keeping up with the users in the emerging markets. It is available in quite ambitious colours of Fiery Red and Spatial Blue, and to go with the trend, it has a FM Radio for music on the go. The phone is constructed out of three different plastic materials, with the inset made of tinted glass, having mirror coating on the front. Design: 5.0 Features: 7.6 Performance: 5.0

Samsung C130 Rs. 2,800

T-101 Melody Rs. 2,399 Call Restriction. FM Radio with Speakers Phone. Built in MP3 & MP4 Player Time synchronisation. 300 Message Memory. 250 Phone book entry. Volume Menu. 65k Colour Display. Multiple Languages. 180 Min talk time.

Size Dimensions 102.4 x 45.4 x 14.8mm, Weight 75g Display Type CSTN, 65K colors, Size 128 x 128 pixels, 1.5inch Ringtones Type Polyphonic (16 channels), Customization, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 500 entries, Call records 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls, Card slot No, 1.8 MB shared memory Data GPRS Class 8 (4+1 slots), 32 - 40 kbps Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Browser WAP 1.2.1, Games Yes, order now, Colors Orange, Pink, Silver, Blue, Camera No, Java MIDP 2.0, T9, Organiser, To Do list, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 750 mAh Stand-by Up to 445h, Talk time Up to 5 h20 min This super slim mobile phone boasts a refined and sophisticated design, setting it apart from its competitors. The cool black phone is accented by white silver edging, which subdivides the monitor and the menu keypad from the numeric keypad, creating a trompe l'oeuil effect that makes the SGH-C130 look more like a slide-up phone than a bartype. Design: Features: Performance:

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7.8 6.8 7.0

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Nokia 6080 Rs. 5,450

Samsung Z150 Rs. 6,800

Size Dimensions 105.4 x 44.3 x 18.6mm, Weight 91g Display Type TFT, 65K colors, Size 128 x 160 pixels Downloadable wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (24 channels), MP3, Monophonic, True Tones, Customization Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Yes, Photo call, Call records 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls, Card slot No, 4.3 MB of user memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD Yes, 43.2 kbps, EDGE Class 6, 177.6 kbps, USB Yes, Pop-Port Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, Games Yes + Downloadable, order now, Colors Black, Gold, Camera VGA, 640x480 pixels, video (subQCif), Java MIDP 2.0, FM stereo radio Push to talk, Video player, Voice memo, Voice command T9, Calendar, Calculator, Built-in handsfree Battery Stand-by Up to 300h, Talk time Up to 3h30 min

Size Dimensions 118 x 47 x 9.8mm, Weight 77g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 176 x 220 pixels, 1.9 inch Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Call records, 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls, 50 MB shared memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, 3G Yes, 384 kbps, Bluetooth Yes, v1.1, USB Yes, v1.1 Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML Games Yes + downloadable, order now, Colors Black Camera VGA, 640x480 pixels, video(QCIF); secondary VGA video call camera, Java MIDP 2.0, Video telephony & streaming, MP3/AAC/AAC+ player, T9, Organiser, Currency converter, To do list, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree Battery Stand-by Up to 270h, Talk time Up to 2 h50 min

The Nokia 6080 is a updated version of the Nokia 6070. It's an entry-level camera phone with a smart, simple design. The features of this phone includes a basic camera and video recorder, a stereo FM radio and user's memory of 4.3 Mbytes. Design: Features: Performance:

Design: Features: Performance:

8.0 7.6 8.0

5.5 5.2 5.3

LG KG200 Rs. 5,200

Motorola W220 Rs. 4,500 Size Dimensions 95 x 46 x 16.7 mm, 74cc, Weight 93g Display Type CSTN, 65K colors, Size 128 x 128 pixels, 28 x 28 mm, Screensavers and wallpapers, Downloadable wallpapers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (32 channels), MP3-like, Customization Composer, Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 600 entries, Call records 10 dialed, 10 received, 10 missed calls, 500 KB user memory 250 short messages Data GPRS Class 8 (4+1 slots), 32 - 40 kbps Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML Games Yes - Football, Rebels, Crazy, Camera No FM radio, MIDI/SP-MIDI/AMR/iMelody player, T9 Calendar, Calculator, Currency converter, Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 880 mAh Stand-by Up to 290h, Talk time Up to 8h The Motorola W220 is a neat & stylish clamshell mobile phone which offers the user all the day to day feature they require. The phone comes in a black & silver coloured casing which measures 95 x 46 x 16.7 mm. The clamshell designed handset is coated mainly in plastic which feels good to hold & weighs 93 grams which is a good weight for the user to carry around & manage. Design: Features: Performance:

The ultra slim 9.8mm thick Samsung Z150 is a welcome entry into the mid-priced 3G phone market. The phone has an easy to use interface and a solid set of features - all for a very competitive price.

Size Dimensions 100 x 46 x 15mm, Weight 89g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 128 x 160 pixels Downloadable wallpapers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels) Memory Phonebook 500 entries, Call records 10 dialed, 10 received, 10 missed calls, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), 60 MB shared memory Data GPRS Class 8 (4+1 slots), 32 - 40 kbps, USB Yes Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML Games Yes, order now, Colors Black, Camera 1.3 MP, 1280 x 1024 pixels, video, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3 player FM radio, T9, Organiser, Voice memo Battery Stand-by Up to 250h, Talk time Up to 3h LG KG 200 offers high resolution camera, MP 3 players, FM Radio and expandable memory. Design: Features: Performance:

7.8 7.8 7.9

7.4 6.2 6.5

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LG KG195 Rs. 5,600

Nokia E62 Rs. 12,700 Size Dimensions 117 x 69.7 x 14 mm, 108cc, Weight 144g Display Type TFT, 16M colors, Size 320 x 240 pixels, 58 x 45 mm QWERTY keyboard, Five-way scroll key, Ringtones Type Polyphonic, Monophonic, MP3, True Tones Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall, Call records Detailed, max 30 days Card slot miniSD, hotswap, buy memory, 80 MB shared memory, 32 MB SDRAM, ARM 9 235 MHz processor Data GPRS Class 11, HSCSD No, EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps Bluetooth Yes, v2.0, Infrared port Yes, USB Yes, miniUSB Features OS Symbian OS 9.1, Series 60 UI, Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML Games Java downloadable, order now, Colors Silver, Camera No, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player Office applications, T9, Voice command/memo PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing, Integrated handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 1500 mAh (BP-5L) Stand-by Up to 330h, Talk time Up to 6h Nokia E62 is poised to become a top handheld. The E62's keyboard is big, with square, rubbery, responsive keys. You'll find a power button near the top of the handset and volume and voice-record buttons on the device's side. Unfortunately, there's no camera or visible memory card slot. Design: Features: Performance:

Size Dimensions 100 x 45 x 12.4 mm, Weight 69.9g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 128 x 160 pixels, 1.8 inches Downloadable wallpapers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels) Memory Phonebook 500 entries, Call records 10 dialed, 10 received, 10 missed calls, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), 64 MB shared memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, Bluetooth Yes, v1.2 with A2DP, USB Yes, v1.1 Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, Games Yes, order now, Colors Black, White, Camera VGA, 640x480 pixels, video, FM radio, Scheduled FM recorder, MPEG4/MP3 player Java MIDP 2.0, T9, Organiser, Voice memo Battery Stand-by Up to 300h, Talk time Up to 3h Full Time Masti, Non Stop Fun with LG KG 195. The phone features all multimedia and music options, with quite a room for songs and pictures in memory. Standby battery time is reported up to 300 hours and talk time of over 3 hours. Design: Features: Performance:

7.7 7.8 7.8

7.5 7.7 7.7

Sony Ericsson W200 Rs. 5,650 MOTO SLVR L9 Rs. 10,400 Size: Dimensions 49 x 113.5 x 11.5 mm, Weight 96g Display: 176 x 220 mm, 1.9" 262K colors TFT Ringtones: Type: Polyphonic MP3 Memory: 20 MB User, Up to 2GB of removable storage Data: EDGE Class 10, GPRS Class 10, GSM Features: 2 megapixel with x8 digital zoom, Clock, Alarm, Calculator, Video capture and playback with sound Battery: Talk Time: up to 400 mins Standby Time: up to 350 hours L9 has integrated music player with stereo Bluetooth wireless technology' allows to freely enjoy music wirelessly on the go. It is powered by GPRS and EDGE class 10 technology providing quick downloads and easy information exchanges enabling users to share pictures, videos and music with family and friends seamlessly. L9 also provides a rich visual entertainment experience via a 2.0 mega-pixel camera with 8x digital zoom, video capture with 4x zoom and full screen landscape playback.

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Size Dimensions 101 x 44 x 18 mm, Weight 85g Display Type UBC, 65K colors, Size 128 x 160 pixels, 1.8 inches Wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3, AAC Memory Phonebook Yes, Photo call, Call records 30 received, dialed and missed calls, Card slot Memory Stick Micro (M2), 27 MB internal memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD Yes, Infrared port Yes, USB Yes Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML(NetFront), RSS feeds, Games Yes + downloadable, order now, Colors Rythm Black, Pulse White, Camera VGA, 640x480 pixels, video, Java MIDP 2.0 FM radio with RDS, Walkman Media Player 1.0, T9, Image viewer Picture editor, Organiser, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree Battery Stand-by Up to 300h, Talk time Up to 7h With stamina for up to 18 hours of music listening, the W200a can store up to 37 full length tracks (or about four albums). For sharing music with friends, a 128 MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card lets users do this in an instant. With memory cards up to 1 GB available, each card will hold up to 255 full-length tracks. Design: Features: Performance:

7.7 7.4 7.5

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Sony Ericsson K770 Rs. 14,700 Size Dimensions 105 x 47 x 14.5 mm, Weight 95g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 1.9 inches Wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (72 channels), MP3, Customization Composer, download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, up to 2500 numbers, Photo call Call records 30 received, dialed and missed calls, Card slot Memory Stick Micro (M2), 256 MB card included, 16 MB internal memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD Yes, EDGE No, 3G Yes, 384 kbps, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML(NetFront), RSS feeds, Games Yes + downloadable, order now, Colors Truffle Brown, Ultra Violet, Sandy Beige, Henna Bronze, Soft Black, Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video, LED flash, secondary VGA videocall camera, Java MIDP 2.0 RDS FM radio, MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, TrackID music recognition, BestPic, T9, Image viewer, Picture editor Picture blogging, Organiser, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo/dial, Stopwatch Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 930 mAh (BST-38) Stand-by Up to 400h, Talk time Up to 10h Sony Ericsson K770: The Sony Ericsson K770 is fun and this is due not only to the good keypad, but also to the phone's quick reactions. The K770, as well as the older Sony Ericsson models, allows you to easily update the software online, through the Sony Ericsson Update Service. Design: Features: Performance:

RAZR2 V8 Luxury Edition Rs. 39,500 Size Dimensions 53 x 103 x 12.05mm Display Large 2.0" QVGA (320 x 240) 262K color external display with contextual touch interaction 2.2" QVGA (320 x 240) internal display, 262K color Ringtones Type: Polyphonic MP3 Memory 2GB of on-board memory with a storage capacity of up to 1000 songs Data MicroUSB 2.0 high speed, GSM Quad, EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12 Features 2.0 MP camera with 8X digital zoom, Windows Media Player 11, Pre-loaded games, HTML Opera Mobile Browser 8.5, MotoSync™ - Over the air synchronisation of Email, Phonebook and Calendar Battery: Talk Time: approximately 250 - 450 mins Standby Time: approximately 200 - 300 hrs RAZR2 V8 Luxury Edition is a stunning blend of cuttingedge technology and bold, sophisticated details that is the pinnacle of ultra-premium cool. This special edition of the RAZR2 has gone "lux" with 18k and 24k gold plated accents standing out against a luminous, black slate, vacuum metal finish. With a soft-touch back, embossed with a snakeskin effect, the device even feels luxurious in the hand.

8.2 8.0 8.2

LG KE970 Shine Rs.14,800 Size Dimensions 99.8x50.6x13.8 mm, Weight 119g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches, Mirror effect screen, full metal body, Downloadable wallpapers Rintones Type Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photocall, Call records 50 dialed, 50 received, 50 missed calls, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), buy memory, 50 MB internal memory, 300 text messages Data GPRS Yes, HSCSD No, EDGE Yes, 3G No, WLAN No Bluetooth Yes, v1.2 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, Games Yes + download, Colors Silver, Titanium Black, Gold, Pink, Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, autofocus, video(QCIF), flash, Java MIDP 2.0 MP3/AAC++/3GP/MPEG4 player, T9, Organiser Voice memo, Document viewer (.ppt, .doc, .pdf, .xls, .txt) Battery Stand-by Up to 280h, Talk time Up to 3h Because of its metal frame, the LG KE970 Shine is nicely weighted, but a lot heavier and a tad longer and wider than the Chocolate. However, surprisingly it is 1.5mm thinner than its colleague and makes for a trim and compact proposition. The spring-assisted slider action is very slick, while the etched keypad is responsive. Design: Features: Performance:

6.2 5.8 6.0

Samsung D880 Duos Rs. 21,700 Size Dimensions 104 x 51 x 18.9 mm, Weight 113g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.3 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photocall, Call records 30 received, dialed and missed calls, Card slot, microSD (TransFlash), buy memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No, EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G No, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML Games Yes, order now, Colors Black, Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video, flash, Dual SIM, Java MIDP 2.0, MP3/AAC+/MPEG4 player, FM radio, Business card reader application, Document viewer, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree, TV out Samsung D880 DuoS slider can work with two SIM cards from different operators or support two phone numbers from the same operator. Both cards in Samsung SGH-D880 can work simultaneously to make and receive calls, send/receive SMS messages. The user also can easily select which card to use for mobile browsing, e-mail and other multimedia services. Design: Features: Performance:

7.4 7.7 7.5

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Samsung G800 Rs. 26,300

Nokia 7900 Prism Rs. 26,500

Size Dimensions 101 x 51.1 x 18.8 mm, Weight 134g Display Type TFT, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Call records 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls, Card slot microSD (TransFlash), buy memory 160 MB internal memory Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps, WLAN No Bluetooth Yes v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS reader, Games Yes + downloadable, order now Colors Titan Grey, Camera 5 MP, 2560?1920 pixels, autofocus, video, xenon flash, 3x optical zoom, Java MIDP 2.0 MP3/AAC/AAC+/e-AAC+/WMA player, Stereo FM radio Face Detection, T9, Bluetooth printing, Document viewer (Word, Excel, Power Point, PDF), Built-in handsfree, Voice memo, TV out Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion, Stand-by Up to 220h, Talk time Up to 3 h 20 min

Size Dimensions 112 x 45 x 11.3 mm, 55 cc, Weight 101g Display Type OLED, 16M colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2 inches Ringtones Type Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, Customization Download, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Yes, Call records 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls, Card slot No, 1GB internal memory Data GPRS Class 32, 107 kbps HSCSD Yes, EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps, 3G Yes, 384 kbps, WLAN No, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 Infrared port No, USB Yes, microUSB Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML Games Yes + downloadable, order now, Colors Black, Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video(QCIF), flash Java MIDP 2.0, UPnP technology, MP3/AAC/eAAC+/WMA player, T9, Calendar, Calculator, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo, Living wallpaper, Configurable keypad backlighting color Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 850 mAh (BL-6P) Stand-by Up to 240h, Talk time Up to 3h

The world's first phone to offer a 5 megapixel camera with optical zoom, the G800 sets the benchmark for camera phones. It's also a beautifully designed slide phone that's fully equipped with an MP3 player, FM radio, accelerated 3G (HSDPA), 160 Mbytes of internal memory plus a memory card slot, and Bluetooth wireless connectivity. Design: 8.4 Features: 8.2 Performance: 8.2

Nokia 7900 Prism will impress you with its aluminum housing, one that is even slimmer and cleaner as a design. Undoubtedly, the model has been targeted at younger users, who are looking for something stylish yet extravagant rather than the conservative trend in models such as 8600 Luna and the 8800 series. Design: Features: Performance:

6.7 6.3 6.4

Sony Ericsson W960 Rs. 36,500 MOTORAZR2 V9: Rs. 24,500 Size Dimensions: 103 x 53 x 13.3 mm, Weight: 125 g Display TFT, 256K colors, 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches, Second external 256K colors, 2 inches display (240 x 320 pixels) with contextual touch interaction Ringtones Type: Polyphonic MP3 Memory 3.5G edition with 4GB expandable memory Data MicroUSB v2.0 high speed, 3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 10, Integrated Stereo Bluetooth wireless technology with A2DP and AVRCP profiles. Features 2.0 mega pixel camera, Windows Media Player 11, Pre-loaded games, WAP 2.0/xHTML, MotoSync™ Over the air synchronisation of Email, Phonebook and Calendar, Java MIDP 2.0. Battery Talk Time: approximately 210 min Standby Time: approximately 260 hour A remarkably sleek and well-designed flip phone, this latest version of the RAZR2 bears that certain "wow" factor and comes in a glossy mahogany sheen that shines both inside and out. It offers a satisfying mix of classic features alongside new and innovative functions like V9 is enabled for Motorola's "MotoSync," which can synchronize mobile email, phonebook and calendar to the personal computer and "See What I See," which lets users to stream live video images to other wireless customers during a call.

Size Dimensions 109 x 55 x 16 mm, Weight 119g Display Type TFT touchscreen, 256K colors, Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.6 inches, Handwriting recognition, Wallpapers, screensavers Ringtones Type Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3, AAC, Customization Composer, download, order now, Vibration Yes Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall Call records, Practically unlimited, Card slot No, 8 GB shared memory for storage, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB flash memory (96 MB reserved for OS + 160 MB user memory) Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, HSCSD No EDGE No, 3G Yes, 384 kbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11b, Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP, Infrared port No, USB Yes, v2.0 Features OS Symbian OS v9.1, UIQ 3.0, Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML(Opera 8.0), RSS reader, Games Yes + downloadable, order now, Colors Vinyl Black, Camera 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(QVGA 15fps), flash; secondary VGA videocall camera, Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS Walkman Touch player, TrackID music recognition, T9 Image viewer, Picture/document editor, Organiser, Voice memo, Built-in handsfree Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 900 mAh (BST-33) Stand-by Up to 370h, Talk time Up to 9h A potent combination of slim UMTS phone and high performance media player, the Sony Ericsson W960 Walkman phone packs enough punch for up to 8,000 songs and includes a Walkman player for finger-touch navigation around playlists on the large screen. The 2.6" display serves as an excellent viewfinder for a 3.2 megapixel camera and as a widescreen for watching video in TV quality. Design: Features: Performance:

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Samsung SGH-i640 A follow-up device to the recent i620, the Samsung i640 is an HSDPA capable 3.5G slider phone with an unusual 320 x 240 pixel display. A quick tour around the specifications on the SGH-i640 show that this is a capable enough device, but it is very much just a rehash of last year's model and the competition has moved on. The 2.4" wide aspect QVGA display is pretty good. Surprisingly the i640 lacks WiFi, and unlike much of the competition, the i640 also suffers from a pretty basic camera, lacks GPS and it doesn't come with a touchscreen. On the other hand, there is a practical QWERTY keyboard and the Samsung i640 runs Windows Mobile 6. So, it seems obvious that Samsung are pitching the SGH-i640 against BlackBerry handhelds and other messaging devices, rather than aiming this at the consumer market. Internal memory is stated to be 141MB and this is expandable with microSD cards. As with many Samsung devices, the i640 is tri-band GSM only with 2100 MHz WCDMA for 3G and 3.5G support. Physically, the i640 measures 95 x 61 x 16mm and weighs 126 grams. The SGHi-i640's battery life has been quoted as a maximum of 6 hours with up to 15 days standby, although it's not clear if that is on 3G or GSM. The 1200 mAH battery should be sufficiently beefy to keep the i640 running for quite a while.


Nokia 6650 The 6650 is a rare clamshell phone from Nokia with HSDPA (3G broadband) and GPS (satellite navigation) support. It's also notable for being another occasion where Nokia have recycled the name of an older handset. One immediately obvious thing to even a casual observer is that the Nokia 6650 very closely resembles the Motorola RAZR range. The flat keypad, slim profile and even the "kick" under the number keys are all characteristic of Motorola handsets, but it's not the first time that Nokia have made a RAZR-like phone - the disastrous Nokia N76 was another example. The Nokia 6650 is a pretty interesting device in its own right. The inclusion of A-GPS (Assisted GPS) is unusual in a clamshell phone, and on top of that the 6650 has HSDPA highspeed data giving download speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. Inside is a 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel display, with a smaller display on the outside with dedicated media keys. The Nokia 6650 has a microSD slot, FM radio and Bluetooth. The camera is a fairly basic 2 megapixel unit, but it does come with a flash. Nokia has not specified the size, weight and battery life at the time of going to press. Announced way back in September 2002 and shipping in 2003, the Nokia 6650 was Nokia's first attempt at a 3G handset. Despite its large size and 141 gram weight, the original 6650 only managed a 128 x 160 pixel display, didn't come with expandable memory or an MP3 player, but it did have Bluetooth. The original Nokia 6650 is a very rare handset where most major carriers started rolling out their 3G network in 2004-5, by which time the 6650 was already obsolete. The first popular Nokia 3G phones were the Nokia 6630 and the unusual Nokia 7600. In other words, it is pretty unlikely that you will buy the original 6650 by mistake.. indeed, it is probably something of a collector's item today.


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Motorola W181 The Motorola W181 is basically the W161 with a colour screen and more conventional looking keypad. Again, this is almost exactly the same as last year's Motorola W180 apart from some cosmetic details. W181 demonstrated an impressive talk time despite it having a colour display. The W181 also has more internal memory for storing text messages and the like. The W181 is slated for release during the first quarter of 2008. The Motorola W181's intuitive user interface, large color display and sleek keypad deliver an enjoyable navigation and viewing experience. Built-in FM radio and one key access to SMS, including storage for tons of texts and contacts, rounds out the feature set, while a long battery life allows plenty of standby time and talk time between charges. Cut out the noise and focus on the call. Motorola's CrystalTalk technology enables a natural phone conversation, even in noisy environments. By separating voice from background and wind noise, CrystalTalk helps enhance the user's voice and channels pure, clear audio directly into the user's ear. Tune into your favorite stations on the built-in FM radio, and personalize calls with 20 preloaded 32-channel polyphonic ringtones and 15 standard alert ringtones. For even more customization, access more than 40 additional downloadable iMelody ringtones.


Sony Ericsson G900 Sony Ericsson G900 can easily give you an impression that its an ordinary Sony Ericsson phone, but in fact the Sony Ericsson G900 is a touchscreen Symbian smartphones, designed to bring touchscreen technology into the mainstream. The Sony Ericsson G900 is a 3G device with WiFi, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and a photo light, a 2.4" 320 x 240 pixel touchscreen display, 160MB of internal memory with Memory Stick Micro support, and because it is a Symbian smartphone, then users can add their own applications. What exactly can you do with the touchscreen on the G900? Well, Sony Ericsson say that you can select menu items, scribble notes, and surf the web. G900 also have handwriting recognition. In other words, it is a fully featured smartphone, like the Sony Ericsson P1i.. just in a more everyday package. G900 has comes with FM radio, multimedia player, stereo Bluetooth, the Opera web browser, document editors and an email client. Don't expect to see the same applications that you find in other Sony Ericsson phones - the software is completely different underneath, and not all "traditional" Sony Ericsson applications have been ported across. On GSM, the talktime of both handsets is a truly remarkable 12 hours, dropping to a reasonable 4 hours on 3G. Standby time is around 15 days, and the Sony Ericsson G900 can manage up to 2.5 hours of video calls. What is remarkable about this handset is just how. Sony Ericsson have fitted perfectly ordinary and very practical mobile phone with a touchscreen while rivals Nokia are still dithering about. Perhaps touch will be the killer application during 2008.. and if it is, then Sony Ericsson has a head start.


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Nokia N96 Advanced multimedia computer optimized for entertainment Mobile World Congress 2008, Barcelona, Spain Finland - Nokia unveiled the Nokia N96, a multimedia computer truly optimized for video and TV. With a large 2.8" screen, 16 gigabytes of internal memory and support for high-quality videos in a wide range of formats, the dual-slide Nokia N96 represents an exciting new chapter in mobile media. The Nokia N96 multimedia computer is expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated sales price of approximately 550 euros, before subsidies or taxes. "In 2007, the Nokia N95 became an icon of convergence of Internet and mobility. With over 7 million units sold to date, the N95 has changed the way people use their mobile device. The Nokia N96 we introduced today builds on the success of N95, further enhancing the experience," says Jonas Geust, who oversees Nokia's Explore category. "Through the power of the Internet, video and TV are becoming even more prevalent in people's lives. With its large, bright screen, and a range of high-speed connectivity options and the enhanced Nokia Video Center, the new Nokia N96 is a personal window to entertainment." Accessing internet videos is quick and simple. The Nokia N96 supports common video formats including MPEG-4, Windows Media Video and Flash Video, making favorite videos easy to view. Transferring and accessing videos is even faster with the high-speed USB 2.0 connection and WLAN and HSDPA support. In select markets, the integrated DVB-H receiver offers live broadcast TV with an automatically updating program guide. The massive memory can store up to 40 hours of video content. The storage capacity of the Nokia N96 can even be further expanded with an optional microSD card, such as the new Nokia 8GB microSDHC Card MU-43 which increases the available memory of the Nokia N96 to a total of 24 GB. For added convenience, the Nokia N96 features a 'kickstand' on the back cover that allows for hands-free viewing. The Nokia Video Center offers one place to discover and access a variety of mobile content ranging from movie trailers and comedy to news from worldleading content brands such as YouTube, Reuters, and Sony Pictures. The catalogue of internet video feeds is continually expanded with more regional and country specific content. For a superb music experience, the Nokia N96 features media keys, a 3.5 mm headphone connector and built-in 3D stereo speakers. The Nokia Maps application offers richer maps with urban details and satellite views and has upgrade options such as City Guides, turn-by-turn pedestrian mode and voiceguided car navigation. The Nokia N96 boasts a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, flash and video light. It allows DVD-like quality video capture at 30 frames per second. Further, with the integrated A-GPS, consumers can now 'geotag' their pictures with location data and share them with their online communities. The Nokia N96 naturally supports the Ovi family of Nokia internet services, including maps, music, media sharing and more.


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Samsung F400 (SGH-F400) Is the Samsung F400 just another glossy looking Samsung slider phone? Not exactly, because the Samsung SGH-F400 incorporates technology from Bang & Olufsen and has a dual-slide arrangement that reveals a loudspeaker for optimum music playback. There' is a lot more to the F400 than its musical capabilities, but as they set the handset apart then it will be worth looking at them first. One immediately obvious feature is the large stereo speaker that slides up from the top of the handset, in a similar manner to the Samsung Serenata and the Samsung i450. This means that the SGH-F400 should be loud enough to actually hear your music tracks or the FM radio properly. The sound system uses Bang & Olufsen's ICEpower amplification system, it also comes with music recognition, a comprehensive audio library function, Samsung's Digital Natural Sound Engine and other music related goodies. The SGH-F400 takes a standard 3.5mm headphone plug, and it also comes with an FM radio with RDS. There's more to the Samsung F400 than just music. This is an HSDPA capable 3.5G device with a maximum download speed of 3.6 Mbps. The F400 also supports GPRS and EDGE data, plus 2100 MHz UMTS and tri-band GSM. On the back of the Samsung F300 is a 3 megapixel CMOS camera. The 2.2 inch 240 x 320 pixel TFT display is semi-concealed behind the F400's glossy surface. Overall, this is an attractive looking handset, but it isn't terribly distinctive. The B&O labelling on the SGH-F400 is very discrete. The Samsung SGH-F400 measures 103 x 48 x 17mm, and it supports USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0. There's a microSD slot to the left of the keypad, although Samsung have not stated the maximum capacity that the F400 can take.


Trend T-786i Dual Sim GSM Trend mobiles were the first in introducing the dual SIM mechanism that allowed a person to hold two different SIMs in one mobile phone. Trend is their brand which markets imported cell phones in the local market. It has now come up with the simplest and yet the most loaded of the mobile phones. It is called the, Trend Perfect Dual Sim, T-786i is available in Bar shape with keypad and touch screen facility. The features of T-786i are startling. Its basic edge is that a user can retain different network operators’ SIMs in one cell phone and can receive calls in both. It is a complete multimedia cell phone with 2 mega pixel camera, which has an audio and video recorders and players as well. The USB data cable allows the user a unique facility of ‘Plug N Play’. Attach the cable with your computer and view what you have recorded. There is no need of any software or driver installation unlike other cell phones. Trend T-786i having Bluetooth connectivity, GPRS and MMS. Trend mobiles offers an unmatched Deluxe Package along with the set which includes a free-of-cost Bluetooth Device, 256 MB memory card, hands free, USB port, Desktop charger, 2 extra batteries and In-Car charger and a Trendy pouch to carry your cell phone in style. The Trend T-786i is a fashion conscious handset, which has a good and attractive size of LCD and gives solid and quality feel when in use. Mobile phone holds another edge to other cell phones in the market. It has the style, it has the attractive look and it has all that you require in cell phone to begin with.


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Informative

Sony Ericsson W980i On the outside of the W980i's glossy case are some black-on-black multimedia keys with just a hint of orange. Open the handset up, there's yet more black. Except someone appears to have stuck some buttons out of a lift in where the keypad should be. All the keys are round, which is completely at odds with the otherwise quite wedgy design. There's a nifty transparent part of the case that shows the "W" logo on the inside. It's not really a fashion phone though - the Sony Ericsson W980i is a Walkman branded music phone with a lot to offer. Inside the W980i is a huge 8GB of internal memory, although this is not expandable. It's a HSDPA 3.5G device which means that it is capable of highspeed music downloads. The W980i supports stereo Bluetooth, and it may come with a pair of stereo wired headphones in the box. Because it is a Walkman phone, it comes with an enhanced music player plus a set of tools to help you transfer tracks from CD via a PC. In addition to the W980i's music player, there's an FM radio with RDS. There is also an FM transmitter - so you can interface the W980i with a car stereo or hi-fi system without using wires. On the outside is a 3.2 megapixel camera, although the digital photography capabilities are not as good as a Cyber-shot phone. Inside is a 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel display, with a smaller 176 x 176 pixel panel on the outside along with the external media control keys. The Sony Ericsson W980i also has a web browser, email client, shake control and a number of other features.


Samsung F480 (SGH-F480) The Samsung F480 is closely related to the Samsung F490, and is a 3.5G capable touchscreen phone with a 5 megapixel camera. Competing more with the LG Viewty than the Apple iPhone, the SGH-F480 looks like a promising device. Touchscreen phones has all the rage at the moment, and Samsung have created quite a few in the past year.. and they seem to be getting pretty good at it now. This is a 3.5G capable device supporting HSDPA high speed data downloads of up to 7.2 Mbps. It also supports standard 3G (UMTS), GPRS and EDGE data, however the Samsung F480 does not support WiFi. The display is a large 2.8" 240 x 320 pixel panel, and on the back is a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. The F480's camera also features video and image stabilisation, has a slow motion function and built-in video editor. There is, of course, a multimedia player capable of playing back a variety of video and audio files. The Samsung F480 also comes with a FM radio with RDS. There's a microSD slot for memory expansion, and the SGH-F480 has Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity. In addition, there is built-in blogging support, an email client and web browser. It's a relatively compact device at 96 x 55 x 12mm and just 91 grams in weight, which is impressive when you consider the number of features that the F480 includes. Samsung haven't given any guidance on battery life though, and we suspect that the F480 will make a tradeoff here. There appears to be an optional cover for the F480, and this will increase size and weight somewhat.


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Informative

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Sony Ericsson Z770i A combination of fashion accessory and business phone, the Sony Ericsson Z770i isn't quite one thing or another. This is an HSDPA capable phone, meaning that the Z770i is a 3.5G device capable of high-speed internet access. Although web access on a mobile phone is not usually much fun, the Z770i comes with the NetFront web browser which attempts to bring a more PC-like environment to the mobile phone platform. The Z770i has a 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel display, Bluetooth 2.0, a USB connection, microSD expandable memory, an FM radio, MP3 player, a two megapixel camera and an impressively long battery life that might well appeal to corporate customers. The Z770i also supports push email from Microsoft Exchange servers. There are three colour combinations, Vogue Red, Graphite Black, Exquisite Golden. The silvery coloured handset in the pictures is actually Vogue Red, so it is hard to judge just what the other devices look like. We mentioned battery life, and for a 3G phone it is pretty good. Talktime is a maximum of 4 hours, and if you are only using the Z770i on GSM then this increases to 8.5 hours. Standby time is around 14 days. It's a very stylish looking device, and at 91 grams and 93 x 48 x 16mm in size the Z770i is pretty compact for a 3.5G phone. While it is certainly the case that the Z770i looks as good on the inside as it does on the outside, it is likely that some people would prefer a more traditional arrangement. Sony Ericsson say that the Z770i should be available during Q2 2008, but did not give any guidance on pricing.


Sony Ericsson T303 Sony Ericsson T303 is a very compact device, it has a long battery life and it looks good. But the specification reads like a handset from a few years ago. The Sony Ericsson T303 has a basic 128 x 160 pixel TFT display, a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and an FM radio. Overall size is 83 x 47 x 15mm and the T303 weighs 93 grams. Bizarrely, the Sony Ericsson T303 comes with a multimedia player, but just 8MB of non-expandable memory. More usefully, the FM radio comes with TrackID to help identify the song that is playing. Talktime is an impressive 9 hours, with up to 16 days standby time, significantly better than other phones in the same range. There will be three variants, the T303a is a 850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz GSM variant for North America, the T303c is a 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz version for China and the T303 is a 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz version for the rest of the world (in previous Sony Ericsson naming conventions, this would have been the T303i). It's an attractive looking phone, but a very basic one - so price will be a key issue. Sony Ericsson have not said how much the T303 is going to cost, but we would say that anything more than 4,000 would be expensive for this device. The T303 should be available from mid 2008.


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Informative

With the introduction of the RAZR, Motorola created the first culturally iconic phone, revolutionizing the way the world views the mobile device. In the years since the RAZR's launch, Motorola has released a string of V3 variations, including the (and its garish golden ), the and the HSDPA . While each sported a slightly enhanced specs list, the sameness of the form factor and lack of interface updates made us wonder if Motorola was resting on its design laurels. Finally RAZR, the most distinctive single mobile phone design in the industry’s short history moved into its next generation with RAZR2 in 2007. Far from being another update, the sequel is a whole different kind of RAZR, with rounder edges, shiny surfaces and somehow a thinner silhouette. RAZR2 evolves the critically important brand into a next-generation device with a host of cutting-edge features such as CrystalTalk technology which automatically adjusts audio to ensure clear calls even in a noisy environment. It is sleeker, stronger and an even smarter consumer experience. RAZR2 FAMILY: Confident and strong, this next-generation RAZR™ takes thin to the next level by packing it with a new, richer multimedia experience. The RAZR2 family's three new handsets introduced in the markets of Pakistan are V8, V8 Luxury Edition and V9. Though all three models--the V8, Luxury V8 and V9--sport identical super-slim silhouettes, there are two main differences as far as specs are concerned. Both V8s are quadband GSM handsets while the V9 is 3G HSDPA. The V8 have 512 MB and V8 Luxury have 2GB of non-expandable memory instead of the V9's 45MB-plus-microSD-slot combo. Some versions of RAZR2 run Linux/Java, giving Motorola entry to the next generation of mobile architecture. In the RAZR2 group they have gone in for call attention to the manufacturer's grade; aluminum has been kept in the dark in merit of stainless metal, with void steel front finish. Dissimilar from the unique RAZR family, here a procurer will face nothing else but a seamless housing with no slits or nicks on the obverse cover at all. In provisos of sizes, there is some attractive reflect that a procurer should better emphasize: various, evaluating closed RAZR and RAZR2 say that the second has a greater dimension. This slanted sensitivity is due to lesser size and such apparatus like mammoth outer display; this is what is possessed by the RAZR2 handsets. RAZR2 V8: First one to make an eye-catching appearance in the market was RAZR2 V8 with its large and colorful external screen and awesome features. Everyone’s attention was diverted to this sleek, shiny and thin clamshell phone because of its incredible advertisement which basically highlighted the sharpness and new features of the phone. It combines the entire music, browsing, imaging and email experience with super fast connections, a large interactive external screen, and an intuitive user interface with a customizable main menu all in one package. RAZR2 V8 LUXURY EDITION: The RAZR 2 V8 has just left the starting gates and Motorola started pushing a special edition version of the new hotness that is the RAZR2 Luxury. The signature RAZR2 form factor has been re-imagined and reconfigured in the most luxurious materials - bathed in gold and clothed in snake-like skin. Apart from being stunning, bold and sophisticated in design, it also includes a full suite of features and accessories for conscious consumers seeking a glamorous design. It is the ultimate gift for the techno-gadget lover who has to have everything. It is also a high style, luxury phone for those who demand fashion and care about style and exclusivity. So, if you really consider style and rareness while purchasing a phone, then this is your phone. RAZR2 V9: The latest incarnation of RAZR handsets to make an appearance in the market is RAZR2 V9. Motorola offers its newest mixture of high fashion and high functionality in the V9. A remarkably sleek and well-designed flip phone, this latest version of the RAZR2 bears that certain "wow" factor and comes in a glossy mahogany sheen that shines both inside and out. Motorola's RAZR2 V9 offers a satisfying mix of classic features alongside new and innovative functions like V9 is enabled for Motorola's "MotoSync," which can synchronize mobile email, phonebook and calendar to the personal computer and "See What I See," which lets users to stream live video images to other wireless customers during a call. SIMILAR FEATURES: The RAZR2 handsets sport a two-pronged display with huge oblique. The two displays have a resolution 240x320 pixels and display up to 262 K colors. At that the exterior screen has a size of 2 inches from curve to curve and the oblique of the interior has a size of 2.2 inches. You can access via the external screen is the ability to read text messages, which is very useful if you don't want to open the clamshell. RAZR2 provides an unmatched music experience, USB 2.0 high speed for fast music file transfers, Windows Media Player® 11 synchronization for simple music management and a music touch screen on the external display for effortless control. After the procession of clonish V3 variants over the last few years, the new RAZR is a pleasing sequel, and should invigorate interest in what is now a hallmark franchise for Motorola. The original RAZR's success was largely due to the fact that it looked completely different to all the other phones cluttering the market; whippet-thin clamshells are now readily available, but the RAZR2 should still capture the hearts of those who fell for the V3 as well as enticing newcomers. Motorola's three-phone RAZR2 line-up is giving forwardthinking mobile phone consumers another reason to look into the high67

Telecom

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With the new MOTOROKR™ T505, Drivers simply Clip, Tune and Go to Enjoy Wireless, Hands-Free Connectivity and Music otorola, Inc. revolutionised hands-free driving with the launch of the MOTOROKR T505 Bluetooth® In-Car Speakerphone and Digital FM Transmitter, its first road-ready, music-oriented ROKR accessory and the latest addition to its portfolio of in-car solutions. The MOTOROKR T505 enables consumers to connect a compatible Bluetooth enabled phone¹ to the car sound system and enjoy hands-free calling and their own personal music collection in outstanding stereo sound. The T505 is extremely portable and requires no wires or installation. Drivers simply clip the device to a car's visor and pair the T505 using Motorola's EasyPair™ technology to a compatible Bluetooth device. When the T505 is connected to a stereo Bluetooth phone, such as a MOTORAZR² or MOTOROKR Z6, or an MP3 player, calls and music are streamed wirelessly with the perfectly-tuned clarity and wide-ranging volume of a car stereo. Drivers with standard Bluetooth phones can use the T505 to make and

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take their calls over the car stereo. And when the ride's over, the T505 can be easily unhooked and taken to another car for the next trip. "Today's drivers demand convenience and connectivity without missing a beat of what's important to them - their calls and their music," said Patrick Mulligan, Area Director, Mobile Devices, Motorola Middle East, North Africa,

Turkey and Pakistan, Motorola. "We're excited to introduce a portable, music-optimised ROKR to the car to enhance the mobile experience while consumers are on the road." The T505 also features StationFinder™, a breakthrough technology that announces where the best FM connection can be found on the user's car radio. When calls come in, the T505 automatically mutes the music and audibly announces the Caller-ID², so drivers can keep their eyes on the road. Cutting-edge echo and noise reduction technology and a built-in microphone and 2-watt speaker also ensure that drivers have outstanding sound throughout their ride. Motorola, a global leader in the Bluetooth accessories market, offers a selection of portable and fixed automotive-focused Bluetooth solutions for drivers including speakerphones, headsets and other accessories.






Motorola Universal Bluetooth® Headset H375 Motorola H375 combines essential functionality and ease of use with style and comfort. Simple buttons for power, calls and volume streamline the experience. Features work together to create the most streamlined wireless experience. Easy Pair™ technology helps simplify connecting to compatible Bluetooth enabled devices. Dedicated on/off and call buttons get you talking with just one press. Battery check feature clearly shows when it's time to recharge. Motorola's expertise in Bluetooth® enabled headsets plus intensive research in ergonomics combine to create TrueComfort™. The best speaker, ear bud and ear hook designs we have created to date. Enjoy exceptional fit, and the audio quality that comes with closer placement to the ear. H375 is no exception, delivering smart style at an affordable price! Free your hands and enjoy the convenience. Using H375, you will feel as good as the time you switched to a cordless phone at home. Forget the wires. QuickSpecs
Quickly take calls at the push of a button
See your remaining talk time with a simple battery check
TrueComfort™ helps provide a comfortable and secure fit
Talk Time: approximately 6 hours
Standby Time: approximately 200 hours - 8 days
Weight 14g
Class 2 Bluetooth wireless technology offers a wireless connection up to 10 meters (33 feet) away*
Connector: Mini USB (EMU)
Universal Compatibility Tested to work with over 200 compatible Bluetooth enabled phones from more than 15 brands such as Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, and LG.

Sony Ericsson MBS100 - Portable Bluetooth™ Speaker Your music is unique to you, so listen to it wirelessly through a unique speaker. High quality audio no matter where you want to listen to your music. Love the design? You'll love how easy it is to take with you, too. The built-in rechargeable battery means it's ready to roll when you are. Listen to the latest download to your phone wirelessly, or the music collection on your computer, through the MBS-100 using the 3.5 mm input port Features
Bluetooth™ technology - 2.0
Install in seconds
Sizes 100.0 x 100.0 x 100.0 mm 3.9 x 3.9 x 3.9 inches
Range up to 10 metres
Available colours -Black

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ant to break into a computers encrypted hard drive? Just blast the machineís memory chip with a burst of cold air. That's the conclusion of new research out of Princeton University demonstrating a novel, lowtech way hackers can access even the most well-protected computers, provided they have physical access to the machines. The Princeton report shows how encryption, long considered a vital shield against hacker attacks, can be defeated by manipulating the way memory chips work. The researchers say the ease of their attack raises fears about the security of laptop computers increasingly used to store sensitive information, from personal banking data, to company trade secrets, to national security documents. Freezing a dynamic random access memory, or DRAM chip, the most common type of memory chip in personal computers, causes it to retain data for minutes or even hours after the machine loses power, the report found. That data includes the keys to unlock encryption. Without freezing, the chip loses its contents within seconds. Hackers can steal information stored in memory by rebooting the compromised machine with a simple program designed to copy the memory contents - before the computer has a chance to purge sensitive data, according to the report. Laptops left in hibernation or sleep mode, or simply not turned off at all, are the most vulnerable to the new type of attack. "These risks imply that disk encryption on laptops may do less good than widely believed," according to the report, which was published this

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week by researchers from Princeton, the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights group, and Wind River Systems software company. "Ultimately, it might become necessary to treat DRAM as un-trusted, and to avoid storing sensitive confidential data there, but this will not be feasible until architectures are changed to give software a safe place to keep its keys." Researchers have known since the 1970s that cooled DRAM chips can retain their contents long after power to them is extinguished, but the researchers said they believe their study is the first security paper to focus on the phenomenon. National security agencies may also have been aware that the types of breaches outlined in the study are possible, the researchers said, but added they weren't able to find evidence of that in any publications. The attacks were carried out by spraying an upside-down canister of multipurpose duster spray directly onto the memory chips, freezing them to minus 50 degrees Celsius, about minus 60 Fahrenheit. One challenge faced by the researchers was the threat that booting the system will automatically overwrite some parts of the memory. To make sure the contents were retained, they used small, special-purpose programs known as memory-imaging tools, which can be loaded over a network connection or a USB device, to save images captured from the memory chip.

omputer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing, according to a leading scientific "futurologist". There will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes is that artificial intelligence could be on a par with human intellect by the 2020s, says American computer guru Ray Kurzweil. Machines will rapidly overtake humans in their intellectual abilities and will soon be able to solve some of the most intractable problems of the 21st century, said Kurzweil, one of 18 maverick thinkers chosen to identify the greatest technological challenges facing humanity. Kurzweil is considered one of the most radical figures in the field of technological prediction. He is a pioneer in various fields of computing, such as optical character recognition - the technology behind CDs - and automatic speech recognition by machine. His address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science portrayed a future where machine intelligence will far surpass that of the human brain. Although the brain cannot match computers in terms of the straight storage and retrieval of information, it has an unrivalled capacity of associating different strands of information, to look ahead and plan, as well as performing the imaginative creativity that is at the heart of human existence.

The attacks even work when the DRAM chip is removed and transferred to a machine set up by the hacker. Special programs were then used to correct errors in the recovered memory contents and reconstruct the keys used for encryption. The researchers said their results suggest that 'this faith in the strength of disk encryption may be misplaced,' arguing that a moderately skilled attacker can bypass many widely used encryption products - including BitLocker with some versions of Windows Vista; Apple's FileVault; open-source TrueCrypt; and dm-crypt - if a laptop is stolen while it is powered on or suspended. "The use of encryption is not, by itself, necessarily an adequate defense, and data in stolen laptops may be compromised even when encryption is used," the researchers said.






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Computing has come a long way since the first time a computer beat a reigning world champion at chess, in Garry Kasparov's 1996 contest agianst IBM super computer Deep Blue.

But Kurzweil is one of several computer scientists who believe that computers are well on the way to creating a "post-human" world where a




second, intelligent entity exists alongside people. 71

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Etihad Airways has hosted a joint “Product Orientation” workshop with Abacus Distribution for their trade partners in Islamabad, to brief them about the exciting new changes ongoing with the airline and update them about latest the Etihad facts and figures. Picture shows the officials from Etihad Airways Islamabad team and Abacus Distributions along with the Travel Agents from region.

HYDERABAD: A student busy with her cell phone while attending the Convocation 2007 of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology.

HYDERABAD: Vice Chancellor Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan Rajput giving away the certificates among the successful students during the Convocation 2007 of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, a Lancia car is hung on the wall at the 78th Geneva International Auto Show in Geneva on the media day. More than 260 car manufacturers from 30 nations and regions take part in the 11-day motor show opened on March 6.

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Regional Manager for South Asia Cambridge International Examination, William Bickerdike giving away the best students certificate during award distribution ceremony as Pakistani students achieve the best examination results in the world and Cambridge rewards high-achieving students at Brilliance in Pakistan Awards.

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IT

A web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear etscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, is no longer supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online. Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base. The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock,

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making the internet "a relevant mass market phenomenon". "Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones - this very academic and technical environment - and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,". "During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing," he said. Other companies capitalised on Netscape's success, notably Microsoft, which began to bundle IE with its Windows operating systems. Although this led to legal wrangles over anti-competitive behaviour, IE now dominates the browser landscape with an 80% market share.

As a result, Netscape became unviable

which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator. "I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape," Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox, told media. "We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched but we've taken them further in terms of openness and public participation." Ms Baker was one of the first employees at Netscape in 1994. Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had coauthored Mosaic, the first popular web browser. His company Netscape Communications Corporation released the first version in 1994. According to Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock, Netscape played an important role in

"While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer," said Tom Drapeau on the Netscape blog last year, when the demise of the browser was first announced. Netscape users have been shown a message alerting them to the end of support for the browser. It then suggests users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox. Firefox is the main competitor to IE, particularly in Europe where it has a 28% market share, according to some statistics. The open source browser's development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003. It has had more than 500 million downloads worldwide and in countries such as Finland it is the most popular browser. "Competition is what brings quality," said Ms

Baker. Flock describes itself as "the social web browser" and allows people to see feeds from community websites, such as Flickr and Facebook, and post to blogs without having to navigate to the page. "There are lots of ways that people are engaging in having a conversation and Flock is very focused on making that as effortless and convenient as possible," said Mr Hardin. However, not all Netscape users are happy about having to change browser. "I'm sad. Flock still needs improvement and I am not happy with Firefox's interface. I'm [an] orphan!" read one post on the Netscape blog.

Others who posted comments on the blog predicted the browser will make a return. "Netscape is a wonderful browser, and it will be so in the future," read one.






Google Seals Acquisition of DoubleClick oogle said it had completed its acquisition of Internet ad firm DoubleClick, a move that gives a boost to the Internet search leader in the rapidly growing online advertising sector. "We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed," said Google chairman and chief executive Eric Schmidt in a statement hours after European antitrust regulators cleared the deal. "Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users." The European Commission said an investigation opened in November 2007 concluded that the transaction "would be unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers." That followed approval by US regulators last year. Google ended a bidding war with Microsoft in April 2007 by agreeing to pay 3.1 billion dollars (2.0 billion euros) to add DoubleClick to its Internet money-making arsenal.

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The deal had fueled concerns that it could pose privacy risks by giving the Internet giant unprecedented access to personal data. But regulators on both sides of the Atlantic said they did not take into account the impact on privacy because they are legally required to focus on competition. DoubleClick is one of the largest players in online advertising and uses various techniques to help companies target their ads to specific Internet users. In a practice common in the industry, DoubleClick installs software bits referred to as "cookies" on Internet users' computers to track pages they view. Google meanwhile stores its users' search terms in a way that can identify them through their Internet Protocol address. Privacy advocates fear that Google and DoubleClick would be able to merge their expansive databases in a way that allows the company to fur




ther track people's Internet activities. 73

s or EE at R er r F Op d fo

at

ten

11th al Annu t Even

India & South Asia

Com 23-24 April 2008 Mumbai, India

Capitalise On Mobile Broadband, Convergence And Digital Content In The World’s Fastest Growing Telecoms Market Evolved from GSM > 3G India to deliver an expanded programme & geographical focus

Anuraj Gambhir, President, SPICE TELECOM Rajesh Sawhney, President Entertainment, RELIANCE Irfan W. Khan, Executive Vice President, TELENOR PAKISTAN Rajesh Kumar, Chief of Strategic Planning & New Technologies, BSNL Neil Chakravarti, Senior Vice President, ZEE TELEFILMS Shahid Chughtai, Head of Corporate Quality Assurance, WARID TELECOM Rajat Kakar, General Management, UNIVERSAL MUSIC INDIA Adrian Scrase, VP International Partnerships, ETSI Arif Malik, Sr. Manager / Head Of Revenue Assurance & Business Intelligence, WARID TELECOM Paul Shoker, CEO, SPICE MOBILE VAS

Harbinder Narula, Head of Content Acquisitions & Partnerships, GOOGLE Ashish Thomas, Director, SINGTEL GROUP INNOVATIONS Anil Tandan, CTO, IDEA CELLULAR

Jagbir Singh, Group CTO Mobility, BHARTI AIRTEL Senthilkumar Sundaram, Head - Mobile Business, MSN Arvind Kumar Srivastava, General Manager of GSM, MTNL Roberto Gavazzi, Senior Project Manager, TELECOM ITALIA

> Dealing With Future Spectrum Challenges

> Evaluating The Evolution Of Mobile Technologies Such As: GSM, CDMA And WiMax > Rural Penetration: Is It An Opportunity For Increasing ARPU Or Subscriber Growth? > The Role Of Mobile Advertising In Driving Mobile Content Sales And Carrier Revenues > Mobile Broadcast TV Services: What Will Work And Where Is It Going?

Umair Mohsin, Segment and Pricing Manager, TELENOR PAKISTAN

> Evaluating The Progress And Technical Challenges For Developing 3G Low Cost Handsets

"Excellent, educative and a great experience"

Endorsing Association:

> Illustrating The Potential Benefits Of Infrastructure Sharing For 3G

> How Do Indian And South Asian Telecom Players Breed Steady Innovation?

Pankaj Sethi, President Value Added Services, TATA TELESERVICES

(CS, MTNL, Mumbai)

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A man looks at Samsung flat screen LCD televisions on display at the Singapore IT Show.

Fair hostess Kerstin Koch-Weger presents a Toshiba M 700 laptop with a rotatable display at the CeBIT 2008 trade fair in Hanover on March 3, 2008.

A woman presents an Anatomic Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME) from IBM Healthcare, at the IBM exhibit at the CeBIT fair in Hanover. According to IBM, the technology allows doctors to click with the computer mouse on a particular part of the avatar "body" to trigger a search of medical records to retrieve relevant information.

An employee of the Peruvian Ministry of Education presents the first batch of computers bought to the foundation "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC), in Lima. The foundation' s aim is to provide all the poor children of the world of computer science access. These computers will be handed to children in the rural areas of Peru in the beginning of 2008.

An artist's impression dated from November 2007 and provided by the European Space Agency ESA shows the European Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV "Jules Verne" advancing to the International Space Station ISS, in background, in an orbit over planet Earth. A European Ariane-5 rocket lifted off from French Guyanaon a mission to bring oxygen, food, water and equipment to the international space station.

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Telecom

Cell phones, which are usually used in the civilized world as tools of communication, have been transformed into micro-cinema houses in Pakistan which run adult stuff at very low costs ew months back I got a chance to interview Shahid Afridi. A day before the interview I went to the Regal Electronic Market of Karachi to purchase an audio recording device. While looking for the recorder, we passed through the city's largest cell phone market. It was almost 9 p.m. but still very noisy and crowded there. Many people were infusing their cell-phones with ring-tones, some were trying to fill the bellies of their handsets with cheap songs and some were selling used sets to buy newer ones. At one shop, as I was peeking at different things and colorful gadgets, I saw some pornographic material in a cell phone. I was shocked to see something like that in a public place. As I noticed things more closely I saw that every other shop was busy in transferring such material into the sets. Cell phones, which are usually used in the civilized world as tools of communication, have been transformed into micro-cinema houses in Pakistan which run adult stuff at very low costs. I noticed that most of the customers in those shops were very young people, mostly in their teens. Then I recalled how one of my friends once showed his cell phone to us which was filled with same material. He told me that his mobile has a memory card of 20 GB and that made it possible for him to carry several 45 to 50 minutes' length films in it. I asked him from where he got all that stuff and he laughed at the stupidity of my question. He told me sheepishly that Saddar is the best market for such stuff at very nominal rates. But it was the set that ranged around 15000 to 20000 PK Rupees and that is not affordable at all for our youngsters to carry such expensive appliances. But those who cannot get access to such things are doing number of other things with their cell-phones. I have been teaching from number of years in one capacity or other so I have interacted with students from primary classes to Masters Level. And believe me no one is safe from this mafia which is ruining the minds of our youngsters.

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Pakistani pedestrians use cellular telephones as they walk past a showcase displaying different phone models at a shop in Islamabad. The telecom sector has contributed strongly to the country's national economic growth, currently constituting some 2 per cent of GDP, which is expected to rise to 3 per cent in the next three to four years.

These days everyone carries 3 to 4 sim cards firstly because they are absolutely cheap and secondly because it is easy to give everyone its due share by having 3 to 4 different numbers.

youngsters. You can notice it yourself how many children own their own mobile set. Are we getting the whole point? Are we thinking what this trend can do to our young generation? We feel elated when we see a new package offered by any telecommunication company. We feel irritated when we see that telecommunication sector does not provide enough employment chances because it is not labor intensive industry but do we ask question what this trend of money making is doing to the tender and impressionable minds? I also need to ask one very relevant question here. What is the role of teachers and parents in all A lady capturing the moments through her cell phone during National Songs Competition this? We see bigger camon the occasion of 60th years of celebrations of PBC. paigns for the eradication Then due to cheaper packages of mobile com- of polio, hepatitis and other physical illnesses panies which costs nothing more than few hun- but what is our role to prevent this soul-killing dred rupees they epidemic? Providing each and every facility to talk to each other our children is our goal irrespective of what it can whole nights. I def- do to their future on the hindsight. I usually initely don't under- involve parents when it comes to the use of interstand how they net and cell-phones but parents generally reply manage to pay that no, no my kid is very naive; he does not feel attention to the like doing such vulgar things. Then I feel temptschool and college ed to ask that whether their kid is not human who classes in the is not immune from the attacks of evil which morning. Carrying never let any opportunity go by easily to annihi5 to 6 inches' long late us, humans. I just want to know is there anymobile sets switch- one listening because out there is a jungle and ing it to the vibra- especially responsible and good parenting tion mode hiding becomes a weapon to survive.




from the eyes of elders at the housTwo youngsters taking snaps through their cell phones of their friends while sitting in the replica of a es is a piece of traditional boat during the last week of Waahdi Mela organized by Punjab Institute of Language, Art cake for our and Culture held at Al-Hamra Cultural Complex.

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s pinching proprietary? We may find out in the coming months as many companies, inspired by the success of Apple's iPhone, release their own multitouch-enabled laptops, smartphones and tablets. In doing so, these companies -- including RIM, Nokia and Synaptics -may run afoul of multitouch patent applications recently filed by Apple. "If Apple's patents are granted, the company could absolutely stop others from using similar technology," says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patent applications for Apple. "They'd also be in an especially good position to stop others from including certain features. Apple could stop [their use] not only on mobile devices but also desktops." Patent experts stressed that the patent office can take four or more years to grant patents, and Apple is far from certain to win these patents. Indeed, other companies, including BenQSiemens and Nokia, have also filed patent applications on a series of gestures and touch applications for multitouch devices. However, with more than 200 patent claims for the iPhone alone, including several multitouch-related patent applications, Apple is clearly seeking to control as much of the multitouch world as it can. Multitouch technology itself is far from being an Apple invention. Jeff Han wowed the crowd at TED in 2006 with a demo of his multitouch research, and Bill Gates demo'd Microsoft's Surface Table in early 2007, months before the iPhone was released. Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly used Microsoft's work with tablet PCs as the jumping-off point for iPhone development. However, the iPhone is arguably the first mainstream gadget to successfully implement a set of concrete touch gestures and link them to specific functions. Pinching zooms in and out. Double tapping initiates a "smart zoom" that hones in on a particular area of the screen. What's more, iPhone and iPod Touch users are now familiar with these gestures and their effects, and will expect to see other multitouch devices work the same way. "It seems that Apple could win patent claims where they are directed toward a touchscreen user device," says Chad Peterman, an expert on patent and antitrust litigation and an attorney at Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler. While a gesture like "the pinch" in and of itself is not patentable, if you connect that motion to a specific function on a popular device, it is possible to argue that other devices using the same technique are infringing, Peterman says. If Apple's patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater. That's an outcome many in the industry would like to avoid. Synaptics, a company that by most estimates supplies 65 to 70 percent of

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the notebook industry with its touchpad technology, is working on its own set of universal touch gestures that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include scrolling by making a circular motion, moving pictures or documents with a flip of the finger, and zooming in or out by making, yes, a pinching gesture. "My guess would be that 80 to 90 percent of consumer notebooks will have these new multigestures by the end of the year," says Mark Vena, vice president of Synaptics' PC business unit. Years before the iPhone and iPod Touch were introduced, Apple began quietly filing detailed patents pertaining to the technology and user interface of its capacitive multitouch interface on the iPhone. The company is thought to have secured much of its multitouch and gesturing technology by acquiring a company called FingerWorks. Its founders, Wayne Westerman and John Elias, have continued working for Apple and filing multitouch patents. As far back as 2004, Apple had begun filing applications for multipoint touchscreens and gestures connected to those touchscreens, including the pinch as well as other important usability features. All together, there are around 200 patents filed for the iPhone alone. This week, Apple filed yet another multitouch patent, this time for an advanced multitouch gesturing-control panel to be used in conjunction with Mac OS X. For companies like Synaptics, which is trying to bring the rest of the industry up to speed with

Telecom

Patent experts stressed that the patent office can take four or more years to grant patents, and Apple is far from certain to win these patents. Indeed, other companies, including BenQ-Siemens and Nokia, have also filed patent applications on a series of gestures and touch applications for multitouch devices its own brand of multitouch technologies, Apple's pending patents could spell trouble. At a basic level, winning a patent requires the development of "a new and useful process, machine or a composition of matter," according to the patent code. But there are other factors that weigh heavily in awarding a patent. Popularity often becomes a component in awarding some patents. There have also been cases where patents were awarded to companies who came up with novel uses or implementations for older technologies. Multitouch may not be new, but "using the pinching motion where the zoom is relative to the space between the users fingers … meets the base requirement for patentability," according to Peterman. William James, an attorney with Van Pelt, Yi & James, which counts Apple among its clients, agrees. "The technological pieces don't have to be new to be able to patent an interface like that," he says. "It helps, but a new application of existing technology will sometimes suffice." While it would be hard to patent a simple flicking motion, the pinch in particular raises a red flag for some patent experts, who say that Apple could claim infringement if it is eventually awarded the patent. Indeed, all indications are that the company is very serious about this technology. On the same day the iPhone launched, Apple even applied for a trademark in a Far East intellectual property office for the term "multi-touch." Yet it appears that the company is not trying to patent the entire multitouch concept, but rather trying to protect certain uses of it -- specifically the methods to interpret gestures, and in some cases, the gestures themselves. Whether Apple succeeds in that attempt is still uncertain.






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umans have been teaching and learning by technology since Socrates first complained about it in the 4th century BCE Phaedrus. Now that we are into the second decade of the Web and the Internet's second generation, we have seen a wide range of practices emerge for teaching and learning with technology. As technologies have proliferated and developed, teachers have developed and shared techniques and projects through networks and institutions. In this cyberspatial milieu, students have been guinea pigs and innovators, taking classes, experiencing projects, helping teachers and staff support instructors teach, graduating as alumni, and sometimes returning as staff. Learning and teaching practices have drawn on larger cultural transformations and affordances enabled by cyberculture. For example, the enormous explosion in popularly generated Web content from personal home pages to Amazon book reviews has demonstrated the viability of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention for creative expression, leading to millions of pages created by students and instructors. The decades-long successes of discussion groups (Usenet through Google Groups) and email have shown the utility of asynchronous conversation, which was rapidly incorporated into class discussions. The ease of creating presentations in PowerPoint, combined with their vast popularity in the business and governmental worlds, has led to vast numbers of multimedia slideshows in the hands of teachers and students. The sheer size and accessibility of cyberculture has transformed teaching and doing research at every educational level. Several factors combine to make exploring this techno-pedagogical record difficult. One is the tradition of classroom privacy, which can cloak projects and discussion. Another is the difficulty of sharing information across campus populations. Public anxieties about technology, fueled by media stories and, occasionally, politicians, play a role in sapping discourse. More recently, the tendency to publish course content to venues closed to the public further clouds the field. Nevertheless, enough work has surfaced and been discussed that a set of teaching principles or themes can be identified, thanks largely to the collaborative ethos of the educational technology profession. We can also distinguish practices, projects, and services by types of computer-mediated communication. Learning materials published to the Web, or

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Learning and teaching practices have drawn on larger cultural transformations and affordances enabled by cyberculture. We have seen a wide range of practices emerge for teaching and learning with technology some network, have supplemented other class materials. Lectures in transcription or sound files, video clips of chemical processes, molecular animations, fly-bys through historical structures all have in common several features. By being accessible outside of class time, they can

(WebBoard, Caucus), e-mail, instant messenger, groupware, and course management systems (CMSes, Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, Sakai) have supported threaded and unthreaded conversations among students both geographically copresent and dispersed. Web 2.0 tech-

be experienced on a student's schedule. That experience can partake of many digital features that differ from some of the analogue world, such as repeatability (replaying a video), scrubbing (rerunning a difficult passage in a new language), segmentation (focusing on one page from a site), and transferability (a phrase copied from CD-ROM text into e-mail to instructor). Instructors can partake of the digital medium's fluidity, reiterating and tweaking objects over time. The social nature of this media experience has been underappreciated until recently. We inherit many assumptions that individuals experience items in isolation, derived from other media (film, TV, games), linguistic habits ("You are talking on the phone!" rather than "You are talking with your friend"), and schools of technological criticism arguing that machines separate, rather than connect, people. Networked computing has proven, in fact, to be quite the opposite-a social enabler. The Internet has linked people from the beginning, to the extent that the relatively recent term "social software" purports to restore some of the Internet's original intention. Even more recently, the rise of massively multiplayer online gaming has returned the social nature of networked computing to popular discussion. In education, this social nature has been one of the major virtues of digital technologies. Discussion boards (Usenet, PHPBB) and fora

nologies have enabled different discussion forms, such as distributed conversations (blogs), conversations embedded within documents (wikis), and threads attached to "social objects" (Flickr). These conversations have sometimes been distinguished by their temporal nature, asynchronous (discussion boards, blogs) versus synchronous (chat, Second Life, IM). Discussions in both forms have connected members of a class to each other, students to instructors, and students with learners elsewhere. Both of these themes constitute a continuum of sociability and objects, with most digital learning occurring with some combination of both. For example, a discussion thread may begin with a reference to an online reading, or constitute responses to a Flickr image. The continuum may map onto nondigital materials and venues, as

when a digital object sparks a classroom face-toface discussion, or watching a play provokes blog posts followed by comments. Moreover, projects may scale up from individual cases along this continuum, into hybrid learning classes, virtual departments (NITLE's Sunoikisis, for example), and discussion between classes in time and space.




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omputerworld, a recent essay in The New Yorker called "Twilight of the Books: What will life be like if people stop reading?" tracks a long decline in the popularity of reading books in the U.S. since at least 1937. Worse, according to the essay: "Americans are losing not just the will to read but even the ability. According to the Department of Education, between 1992 and 2003 the average adult's skill in reading prose slipped one point on a 500-point scale, and the proportion who were proficient -- capable of such tasks as "comparing viewpoints in two editorials" -declined from 15% to 13." To me, even more alarming than the loss of reading skill -- and probably related to it -- is that many young people have lost interest in books.

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Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs recently criticized Amazon's Kindle e-book reader by saying that "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don't read anymore." vation of leisure" and the "triumph of triviality." In other words, technology in general has caused our culture to evolve into one in which long-form books can't compete for our attention against the onslaught of Internet celebrity gossip, YouTube videos and iPod music. Much of the world is following America down the literary toilet. But one interesting exception is, of all places, Japan.

Why Japanese kids love books Why American kids hate books? Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs recently criticized Amazon's Kindle e-book reader by saying that "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don't read anymore." He went on to say that "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year." (It turns out that the correct number is 27%, not 40%, but Jobs does have a point.) I think, I understand why Jobs has come to believe that the book-buying public isn't worth serving. Apple does a great job making all kinds of media available through iTunes -- not just music, movies and TV shows, but podcasts and audiobooks sold through Audible.com. (We'll see how long the Audible.com relationship lasts now that Amazon has purchased the company.) And guess what? The music sells like crazy, and TV show and movie sales are growing fast. Meanwhile, podcasts aren't nearly

orph, a joint nanotechnology concept, developed by Nokia Research Center (NRC) and the UK's University of Cambridge - has been put on show at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Morph is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes. It demonstrates the ultimate functionality that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering: flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces. Dr. Bob Iannucci, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia, commented: "Nokia Research Center is looking at ways to reinvent the form and function of mobile devices; the Morph concept shows what might be possible". Mark Welland, Head of the Department of Engineering's Nanoscience Group at the

as popular even though most are free, and hardly anyone buys audiobooks for their iPods. If people won't even listen to written works, why would they actually read them? Much of the world is following America down the literary toilet. But one interesting exception is, of all places, Japan. In an essay in The American Thinker, writer Lawrence Murray warns of a "new Dark Age" brought about by a combination of information overload, the "passi-

Half of Japan's top 10 best-selling books last year -- half! -- started out as cell phonebased books, according to the New York Times. The books-on-phones genre started when a home-page-making web site company realized that people in Japan were writing serialized novels on their blogs, and figured out how to autocreate cell phone-based novels from the blog entries. The popularity of these blog novels on cell phones sparked huge interest among readers in writing such novels. Last month, the site passed the 1 million novel mark. Some of these amateur writers become so famous on the cell phone medium that the big publishing houses seek them out and offer lucrative deals for print versions. The No. 5 best-selling print book in Japan last year, according to the Times, was written first on a cell phone by a girl during her senior year in




high school.

University of Cambridge and University Director of Nokia-Cambridge collaboration added: "Developing the Morph concept with Nokia has provided us with a focus that is both artistically inspirational but, more importantly, sets the technology agenda for our joint nanoscience research that will stimulate our future work

together." The partnership between Nokia and the University of Cambridge was announced in March, 2007 - an agreement to work together on an extensive and long term programme of joint research projects. NRC has established a research facility at the University's West Cambridge site and collaborates with several departments - initially the Nanoscience Center and Electrical Division of the Engineering Department - on projects that, to begin with, are centered on nanotechnology. Elements of Morph might be available to integrate into handheld devices within 7 years, though initially only at the high-end. However, nanotechnology may one day lead to low cost manufacturing solutions, and offers the possibility of integrating complex functionality at a low




price.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs

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he European Commission is spending 55m euros (£42m) on making the net a safer place for children. The money will be spent over four years on educational efforts and ways to protect children from inappropriate content and cyber bullying. It will also research the ways that children use the net on computers and other devices such as mobile phones. The broad-based project will build on the Safer Internet Programme the EU began in 2000. "As more and more European children and adolescents use online technologies at home or at school, they, their parents and their teachers need to be informed about the opportunities and risks they face," said Jose Barroso, EC president in a statement. The original Safer Internet Programme produced materials for schools and youth groups and coordinated the annual Safer Internet Day. The extended project, which will run from 20092013, will continue this work but add some more concrete objectives. These will include the creation of national contact points to report illegal content and attempts at grooming; giving support to groups to which parents and children can turn for advice about safe net use, and the establishment of a forum where best practice can be shared and debated. In a separate development, net experts at Harvard University will spend 12 months studying how children can avoid unwanted attention when using the web. Run by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard the Internet Safety Technical Task Force will aim to research and recommend practices that sites can adopt to make themselves safer places for children. The impetus for the task force came out of an agreement social network site MySpace reached with every US state attorney general, except




Texas.

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IT

his is an interesting new approach for providing Internet access to remote areas which lack infrastructure. The idea is to send balloons which soar 20 miles into the stratosphere, each carrying a shoebox-size payload of electronics that acts like a mini cellphone "tower" covering thousands of square miles below. WSJ reports that Google is partnering with Space Data, the company behind the balloon idea, and may even buy it. Hinterland is the part of a country where only few people live and where the infrastructure is underdeveloped. In the context of third world countries entire provinces are hinterlands. Maintaining a telecom system based on gas-filled bladders floating in the sky requires some creativity. The inexpensive balloons are good for only 24 hours or so before ultimately bursting in the thin air of the upper atmosphere. The electronic gear they carry, encased in a small Styrofoam box, then drifts gently back to earth on tiny parachutes. Google believes balloons like these could radically change the economics of offering cellphone and Internet services in out-of-the-way areas, according to people familiar with its thinking. The company is among the registered bidders for a big chunk of radio spectrum at a government auction currently under way in Washington. While the balloons are cheap and disposable at $50 a pop, the transceivers they carry are worth about $1,500. Once a transceiver is released from its balloon to parachute back to earth, there's no way to predict where it will land. So Space Data has hired 20 hobbyists with GPS devices to track them down. Recovery missions can get intense. Workers have had to pluck transceivers out of trees in Louisiana, rappel down rocky cliffs in Arizona, trudge through swamps and kayak across ponds. Space Data pays them $100 per transceiver recovered. "These things can fall anywhere," says Chip Kyner of San Antonio, who once hiked seven miles before finding the transmitter he was looking for. The final mile was in pitch darkness.




"It wasn't worth the $100," he says, "but it's a neat story.

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AMD beats Intel in Quad-Core ecent tests by Neal Nelson, an independent computer performance expert, show that while some Quad-Core Intel Xeon based servers delivered up to 14 percent higher throughput, similarly configured QuadCore AMD Opteron based servers consumed up to 41 percent less power. The test servers used 1 GB memory modules at 4, 8 and 16 gigabyte main memory sizes. "By themselves the Intel processor chips may use less power, but all current Intel Xeon servers require the use of Fully Buffered memory modules. These FB-memory modules appear to consume more power than the DDRII memory modules used by the AMD based servers. The result is that in many cases an Opteron based server actually uses less total power than a Xeon based server," observed Neal Nelson, designer of the test. These new test results were collected with

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Neal Nelson's Power Efficiency Benchmark which is a client server test where up to 500 world wide web users from 32 separate computers submit individual transactions to a server running the Apache2 web server software, the MySQL relational database and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. The benchmark has a complex multi-user

load with a large memory footprint, a high volume of context switches, significant network traffic and substantial amounts of physical disk I/O. "I am certain that these test results are cor-

rect," Nelson continued, "I am so certain that I have begun to offer my customers a money back guarantee if their real world experiences do not agree with my benchmark data." The Nelson test results should not be confused with power usage test results from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). The SPEC Power test has a single client machine feeding batches of 1,000 transactions to a small number of Java based application programs. The SPEC Power test has a small memory footprint, a low volume of context switches, simple network traffic and it performs no physical disk I/O. The SPEC test was created by a committee of computer vendor employees and SPEC offers no guarantee that their numbers will correlate to a customer's real world experi




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Solution to

IT Infrastructure Problems Advances in clustered computing power, faster networks, and shared storage are placing the benefits of grid computing within reach of even the most cost-conscious businesses today. When deployed on Linux and powered by Oracle, IT organisations can now build dynamic industrystandard grid systems well suited to meet the rapidly shifting needs of twenty first century business

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ou're a financial services company. At the end of the quarter, when you're processing your clients' reports, you'd like to focus most of your processing power there. Four weeks later, when you're analysing returns from a big marketing campaign, you'd like to shift that power to your data warehouse. So how would you reallocate your processing resources? Most likely, you wouldn't. Each database server would be outfitted for its respective peak load, with one running hot while the other runs cold. Easy to say but hard to do - until now. Advances in clustered computing power, faster networks, and shared storage are placing the benefits of grid computing within reach of even the most cost-conscious businesses today. When deployed on Linux and powered by Oracle, information technology (IT) organisations can now build dynamic industry-standard grid systems well suited to meet the rapidly shifting needs of 21st century business. What is Grid? Grid computing is a new IT architecture that produces more resilient and lower cost enterprise information systems. With grid computing, groups of independent, modular hardware and software components can be connected and

rejoined on demand to meet the changing needs of businesses. It has increased momentum as the enterprise IT architecture of choice. Forrester Research reports that 37 percent of enterprises are piloting, rolling out, or have implemented some form of grid computing. IDC identifies grid computing as the fifth generation of computing, after ClientServer and Multi-tier. Leading businesses, such as Dell and the Chicago Stock Exchange have begun deploying enterprise grids. What is Oracle Grid? At the highest level, the central idea of grid computing is computing as a utility. By that, we mean that you shouldn't care where your data resides, or what computer processes your request. You should be able to request information or computation and have it delivered - as much as you want, and whenever you want. This is analogous to the way electric utilities work, in that you don't know where the generator is, or how the electric grid is wired, you just ask for electricity, and you get it. The goal is to make computing a utility, a commodity, and ubiquitous. From the "server side", or behind the scenes, the grid is about resource allocation, information sharing, and high availability. Resource allocation ensures that all those that need or request resources are getting what they need, that resources are not standing idle while requests are going unserviced. Information sharing makes sure that the information users and applications need is available where and when it is needed. High availability features guarantee all the data and computation is always there, just like a utility company always provides electric power. Oracle resonates with the grid. The ideas of grid computing are aligned with capabilities and technologies Oracle has been developing for years. The company provides substantial grid computing technology, available today that can help you capitalise on the grid. Benefits of grid computing The best thing about the grid is that it is unstoppable. IT systems designed and implemented in the grid style deliver a higher quality of service, at a lower cost, with greater flexibility. Higher quality of service results from having no single point of failure, a powerful security infrastructure, and centralised, policy-driven management. Lower costs derive from increasing the utilisation of resources and dramatically reducing management and maintenance costs. Rather than dedicating a stack of software and hardware to a specific task, all resources are pooled and allocated on demand, which eliminates underutilised capacity and redundant capabilities. Grid computing defined It treats collections of similar IT resources holistically as a single pool, while exploiting the distinct nature of individual resources within the pool. To address simultaneously the problems

of monolithic systems and fragmented resources, grid computing achieves a balance between the benefits of holistic resource management and flexible independent resource control. IT resources managed in a grid include: Infrastructure - the hardware and software that create a data storage and programme execution environment; Applications - the programme logic and flow that define specific business processes; Information - the meanings inherent in all different types of data used to conduct business. What are the challenges faced by Grid computing providers in Pakistan / Sage west? There are some challenges but not insurmountable ones. For one thing, the concept is revolutionary and as we saw in past paradigm shifts, this one will require an adoption curve. There is an increased demand suggesting that the initial

acceptance level has been crossed. Second is that there are a plethora of messages from different vendors that are reaching the same audiences. So it takes time for them to sift through the messages and decide on what is best for them. The customers are increasingly receptive to the message of software-based grids as they see the logic of simplification, standardisation and consolidation that Oracle promotes as being the most appealing. Third is that of skills in the market to implement grid solutions. As with other new ideas, the industry takes some time to develop the optimum level of skills required. Oracle is working with its partners to increase their skill levels on grid computing to accelerate the adoption rates in the industry. n

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Flare Report

Intel's Smallest Processor Built Using World's Smallest Transistors, Designed for New Internet Devices, Low-Cost PCs he Intel® Atom™ processor will be the name for a new family of low-power processors designed specifically for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and a new class of simple and affordable Internet-centric computers arriving later this year. Together, these new market segments represent a significant new opportunity to grow the overall market for Intel silicon using the Intel Atom processor as the foundation. The company also announced the Intel® Centrino® Atom™ processor technology for MID platforms, consisting of multiple chips that enable the best Internet experience in a pocketable device. The Intel Atom processor is based on an entirely new microarchitecture designed specifically for small devices and low power, while maintaining the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo instruction set compatibility consumers are accustomed to when using a standard PC and the Internet. The design also includes support for multiple threads for better performance and increased system responsiveness. All of this on a chip that measures less than 25 mm², making it Intel's smallest and lowest power processor yet.* Up to 11 Intel

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Atom processor die -- the tiny slivers of silicon packed with 47 million transistors each -- would fit in an area the size of an American penny. These new chips, previously codenamed Silverthorne and Diamondville, will be manufactured on Intel's industry-leading 45nm process

with hi-k metal gate technology. The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5 watt range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer need. By comparison, today's mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35-watt range. "This is our smallest processor built with the

world's smallest transistors," said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney. "This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry." With personal computing increasingly going mobile and the computer industry rapidly developing new classes of products to connect the next billion people to the Internet, the Intel Atom processor offers customers the unique ability to innovate around the new low-power design. In addition to the MID opportunity, Intel believes the demand for a new category of low-cost, Internetcentric mobile computing devices dubbed "netbooks" and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed "nettops," will grow substantially over the next several years. The Intel Atom processor is perfectly suited to meet these new market segments. Intel said the Intel Atom processor also has potential for future revenue opportunities in consumer electronic devices, embedded applica




tions and thin clients.

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Pictorial

Models present the world premier of the Peugeot 308 Touring wagon, at the Melbourne Motor Show. The car, which joins the newly released 308 range, can be ordered in a seven-seat configuration and has a panoramic glass roof.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) shows bioscience professor Kim Tae-Kook. The KAIST held a meeting of its research truth committee to investigate Kim's allegedly fraudulent work which is said to have paved the way for developing methods to detect and kill cancer cells selectively without damaging normal cells, and materials that can prevent cell ageing and extend human life.

The new Volkswagen Passat CC is shown during the press day at the 78th Geneva International Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland.

Visitors take pictures of an angel shark using their mobile phone as it passes above them during the public opening of The Manila Ocean Park, the country's first oceanarium, in Manila, Philippines.

University of Cincinnati students throw desktop computers from the top of a parking garage on the campus the university. The release of 29 computers from the fourth floor of the University Avenue Garage was part of a leap year celebration.

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Pictorial

The logo of Google, seen on the front door of the new Google Engineering center in Zurich, Switzerland.

South Korean Yi So-yeon poses in Seoul in this undated photo. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said at a news conference that Yi will replace Ko San as the country's choice to fly on a Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station in early April.

Japan's safety goods maker Tanizawa employee displays a prototype model of a mobile utility helmet "U-met", equipped with a QVGA mobile camera, a GPS device, a LED light and a headset at the Security Show in Tokyo.

A Citroen Cactus concept car is displayed during the first media day of the 78th Geneva Car Show at the Palexpo in Geneva.

South Korean models show Japan's camera giant Olympus' new SLR (single lens reflex) digital camera "E-420" during an unveiling event in Seoul. The E420 model equipped with a 10 mega-pixel sensor and a 2.7-inch LCD weighs 375 grams. The company touts E-420 as the world's smallest digital SLR camera.

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Chairman PTA Confirms Participation at TeleCON'2008 in April The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has growth of the telecommunication sector to the future economconfirmed the participation of Major-Gen (R) Shahzada ic and social development of Pakistan. Alam Malik, Chairman PTA at TeleCON'2008 - the 2-day Mr. Menin Rodrigues President & CEO of the SHAMGlobal Telecommunication Congress being held on April ROCK Group while expressing his appreciation of the partic29-30, 2008 at the Karachi Sheraton Hotel. ipation of PTA at "TeleCON 2008 said, "We are delighted to Pakistan's first 2-Day Global Telecommunication have received the recognition and support of PTA and look Congress with a special emphasis on Challenges & forward to the participation of all key players in the industry at Opportunities in the new era of digitalized and wireless the Congress. Pakistan is at the crossroads of an economic environment has already attracted the attention of prolific challenge and I am sure the telecom sector will be the critical international and Pakistani speakers from the telecom factor in assessing the confidence of investors in the imminent future." industry, including delegates both from the business, techHe hoped that the 2008 Global Telecommunication nical, academia and information-technology sectors. Congress would bring together top names from both governThe 2-Day congress organized by SHAMROCK Major-Gen (R) Shahzada Alam Malik, Chairman PTA. ment and industry to share their local and international perConferences International is expected to draw large-scale spectives, particularly the technologies of the future and participation from leading telecom companies, professionals and technical educational institutions and vendor-organizations explore the extensive range of growth and investment opportunities in directly or indirectly involved in the telecommunication sector. The focus this growing and innovative market.
of the conference will be to highlight the significance and technological

Si3 & Faysal Bank Sign HCM Deal ystem Innovation Private Ltd (Si3) and Faysal Bank Limited have signed an agreement according to which Si3 would deploy global best practices Human Capital Management (HCM) Application at Faysal Bank Limited. Faysal Bank Limited has embarked upon a project to implement Oracle Human Capital Management in the bank. Si3 will be performing the role of application implementer and shall provide the implementation resources, thus the overall project management will be done by Si3. Commenting on the agreement, President & CEO of Si3 Amer Hashmi said that Si3 is delighted to be selected as the lead integrator for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application deployment services. "Faysal Bank is very excited about the automation and centralization of its Oracle based HR services that are about to be implemented by Si3 in Pakistan." said Mansoor Ahmed, Head of PMO & Chief Information

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Security Officer, Faysal Bank. "The bank looks forward to a seamless integration of the HRMS modules with its financials through professional expertise and customization provided by Si3". Samina Rizwan, Regional Director, Oracle SAGE West said that "The increasingly competitive banking landscape alongwith shortage of skilled resources in the country is arguably the most profound challenge that the financial industry faces today". Oracle's objective is to partner with its customers to understand their business needs and address key challenges. In this spirit, Oracle HRMS will help Faysal Bank achieve a 360-degree view of employees, manage their growth, service them effectively and through their contribution, further improve service and

operational excellence. "I am confident that our partner, Si3, will fulfill its obligation to Faysal Bank by bringing the project in on time while maintaining high quality" she added. Commenting on Si3's role, Amer Mubbusher, Country Head Si3 Pakistan, said "The people at Si3 are seasoned IT professionals, held in high regard by the customer community as well as the Alliance community and known for their project management of complex engagements. I am confident that we can bring their delivery capabilities to the fore to delight Faysal Bank with a best of breed HCM system and make Si3's ERP implementation business one of the most respected in Pakistan." Seemin Shafi, Head of Human Resources at Faysal Bank was of the view that "The Oracle HRMS will enable the bank to adopt global best practices in HR and provide the MIS required to address policy issues to make Faysal Bank an employer of first choice for banking professionals."


A new Product by Ufone

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Ufone recently launched a revolutionary new product calling it 'Ur Number' through this service, customers will be able to translate their names, nicks, email ids or any word that they associate with themselves, into a mobile phone number. This service stands as a landmark creating a new wave which is set to replace the demand for golden and other unique numbers that are popular amongst existing customers. For example instead of asking for a number such as 033-1234567, customers can now walk in and look up numbers such as 0333 iani005. This will be translated into 0333-2663007 respectively, where every letter corresponds to a number on your phones keypad. Set to cause a very high interest amongst a very diverse target base this will be a very new and unique way of telling your number to some one so that they remember it. The rest is left to imagination of a customer. Ufone is an Etslate Group Company and is Pakistan's leading cellular operator with a customer base of more than 16m. Ufone service scattered in all the major cities, towns, villages and tehsail headquarters. The company employs more than 300 franchises and 25 company-owned customer service centers along with a distribution net work of 150,000 outlets across Pakistan.


The Federal IT Minister Dr. Abdullah Riar visited New Horizons Pakistan, leading IT training facility recently. Seen in the picture is the honourable minister with representatives of Microsoft, Cisco, PMI & staff of New Horizons Pakistan

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Telenor Ranked 'World's Best by Sustainability Yearbook 2008' Telenor was ranked World's Best Mobile Telecom Company by sustainability yearbook 2008, one of the world's most recognized and insightful publications on corporate sustainability. The sustainability Yearbook assesses and documents the Sustainability performance of more than 1000 companies from 57 specific sectors based on a wide range of economic, environmental and social criteria. The company already ranks number one on the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) in mobile telecommunication ahead of 13 leading mobile operators

worldwide. The indexes rank companies worldwide based on their performance according to economic, environmental and social criteria. Telenor was also awarded two new titles for the Mobile Telecom sector. The Sector Leader award identifying the company best prepared to seize the opportunities and manage the risk, deriving from sector-specific economic, environmental and social developments, and sector Mover award for proportionally improving sustainability performance the most since last year.


Sangoma Expands Distribution Channel Sangoma Technologies Corporation, the premium provider of PC-based telephony hardware and software products for proprietary and open source based networking and telephony solutions, announced that they have partnered with Convergence, a provider of open source networking solutions for core telephony and switching applications, to expand distribution of Sangoma's premium telephony and data cards throughout Pakistan and the Middle East. Convergence offers customers custom development of open source telephony and networking solutions, as well as professional consultation, product placement, training, proposal development and response to emerging demands in communication technologies. "Convergence is proud to have been selected to help strengthen Sangoma's market position in Pakistan and the Middle East," said Wasim Baig, Principal Consultant for Convergence. "Since 2002, customers have been wowed by the quality, engineering level support, innovation, reliability and performance that both companies have repeatedly demonstrated in building and supporting open source telephony systems across the region."

As an 'Empowered by Sangoma' channel partner, Convergence is authorized to sell Sangoma hardware, and will be kept up to date directly by Sangoma regarding new developments that can benefit their customers. Convergence will provide a valuable sales channel and first line of support for local call centers, long distance and local loop telephony customers and enterprises, voice over packet providers, and internet telephony service providers throughout the region. Sangoma customers purchasing through the Convergence sales channel will still receive Sangoma's industry-leading warranty, money back guarantee, and Sangoma's renowned free technical support. "Convergence has been active in helping us drive the development of our Signaling Media Gateway, and we look forward to bringing this revolutionary product line to emerging telecom customers in the Pakistan and Middle Eastern region," said Nenad Corbic, Chief Software Engineer for Sangoma. "Strong telephony and data network experience makes Convergence a particularly well-suited organization to help us develop and mature local markets within this region."


People Take Interest in PTCL Facilitation Point The daylong customers' facilitation point was a very successful show, a spokesman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company said in a press release. He said customers showed keen interest in the PTCL services and products. The programme was launched for customers of Islamabad areas but people from far-flung areas of the twin cities also visited the

Lady officials brief about the newly launched "PTCL BUZZ" a broadband entertainment portal during the launching ceremony held at a local hotel.

point. He said they were interested in getting new telephone connection, wireless local loop, digital subscribers' line, broadband student package, etc. The spokesman said the other aim of the one-stop shop was to receive complaints from customers and resolve their problems regarding telecom services.


Girls takes information about the jobs during a Job Fair at Jinah Convention Center

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National

An Outstanding Professional Taimur Ali Khan is one of the most inspiring figures of the advertising world today. He pursued his higher education in Business Studies from the land of the down under's Sydney International College of Business, Australia. During his degree Taimur got intrigued by the concept of "Marketing". Therefore, he came back to Pakistan and engaged in his ambitions by ending up doing an MBA in Marketing from National College of Business Administration & Economics. Orient McCann-Erickson was the first company to recognise his true potential and spirit for advertising; landing him his first job as a Senior Client Executive in the year 2000. By the grace of Allah and shear hard work he was short listed by JWT Lahore as a Client Service Manager. But his energy and zest for achieving more spread across the town like rapid fire. He grew as a professional by leaps and bounds. Convincing an organization like Interflow Communications (Pvt.) Ltd., to take him on board as an aspiring Group Client Service Manager. Taimur realised that it was just the beginning of a

Mr. Sarshar Ali, Brand Manager Canon is giving Face of the Month award to a contestant.

great endeavour in every progressive activity he under took. Be it various trips to international or national projects, forums or workshops, he impressed many by his nag for details and sharp thinking towards category discovery, strategy, research, consumer know-how, branding and competitive communication. Gracing him with the opportunity to become a Group Account Director for Evernew Concepts (Pvt.) Ltd. where he still pursues greater challenges, by taking his company places and leaping towards foreign shores like India for international projects. To summarize Taimur Ali Khan's impressive career in a nutshell he has worked for a complete melange of impressive clientele, namely Nestle', Tetra Pak, Haleeb Foods, Mitchell's, Thuraya, Stiefel, Care International, Dabur India, WorldCall, and many more - Making him a living example of one of the most promising professionals across Pakistan, for times to come…


A model is posing for a shot in Karachi.

Computer Course for Adiala Jail Inmates Ends District and Sessions Judge Rawalpindi Khadim Hussain has appreciated the efforts of Khubaib Foundation for the welfare of inmates of Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, says a press release issued here. He stated this while addressing certificate distribution ceremony after the conclusion of computer course organised by Khubaib Foundation at Adiala Jail recently. Superintendent Jail Tariq Mahmood Babar Khan and Media Advisor Khubaib Foundation Naeem Khaliq Dad were also present on the occasion.

The course is part of the Khubaib Foundation's efforts to encourage prisoners to change their lives and make them respectable citizens of the society. For this purpose, the foundation has initiated a number of programmes for prisoners. Praising the work of Khubaib Foundation, Khadim Hussain said, "Such efforts will not only support the prisoners but it will also have a positive impact over the society as a whole," he said.


'$50bn Global Trade Prospects for Pakistan' A $50 billion industry with 30% per annum growth rate linked with $700 billion E-commerce trade world wide is available for Pakistan, said Abdullah Butt, President, Association of Call Centre Operators (ACCO) Pakistan. Currently there are 70 call centres operating in the country and still there is so much business available internationally, that even if 100 call centres each of 100 seats are working in Pakistan, still there will be more business coming in, he said. Butt said, despite supporting this industry the government has never taken serious steps to promote this industry, which can bring huge invest-

ment in the country and could help to an instinct control unemployment, which is rapidly increasing every year. For any international call centre operations, the nerve is telecom link and in Pakistan the weakest support one has is the telecom link and the cost of the utility is so high that the more you use the more you pay. The process of import is very cumbersome and expensive, he added. Visa constraints on international employees and investors; security issues; a very heavy bureaucratic approach towards the industry; lack of mass awareness of this industry by government and private media; no training subsidisation.


IT has Great Potential for Pakistan, says Wasim

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Senator Wasim Sajjad, Chancellor Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST) University and leader of the House in the Senate has said that information and communication technology is a source of strength as some South Asian countries earn billions of dollars from Information Technology but Pakistan is earning only $10-15 million from it annually. Addressing the 11th Convocation of National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, (NUCES-FAST) as the chief guest he said that such education in the field of technology will result in poverty alleviation in the long run, as more jobs will be created. Degrees were awarded to 381 graduate and postgraduate candidates of Computer Science, Computer Engineering & Telecom engineering in

the convocation. Medals were awarded to graduates for their excellent academic performance. A total number of 25 medals were awarded that included eight gold medals, eight silver medals, and nine bronze medals. The students who received medals in recognition of their academic performance are: Muhammad Umair Aftab, Chaudhary Hasan Afzal, Bilal Yousaf, Owais Ali, Syed Aftab Hayat, Ms Sonya Tahir, Zeeshan Hussain, Farhan Hafeez Mughal, Ms Eizza Bilal, Faisal Iqbal, Attique Dawood, Syed Owais Ahmad, Ms Merai Syed, Taha Hussain Lughmani, Ammar Hassan, Muhammad Usman Shahid, Amina Nawaz Cheema, Ms Farheen Shahid, Ms Saira Viqar, Ms Hina Anwar Khan, Muhammad Sanaullah, Fahad Maqbool, Ms Sana Bilal, Ms Faiza Parwez, and Ayyaz Hussain.


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Mobilink Gets Recognition at Mobile World Congress Mobilink, the country's market leader in cellular communications with more than 300 million customers and part of Orascom Telecom, relieved premium recognition at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) which concluded in Barcelona last month. The company contribution in Pakistan's economic and social growth and for bringing Pakistanis together was highlighted by the international media at this event. The mobile phone industry in Pakistan has grown exponentially and

with "more than 65 million people using mobile phones each day in Pakistan, the country is much wired together". Special recognitions was earned by Mobilink for its CSR efforts in the country when in the international media reported, It was just one of a number of example at the congress, the largest of its kind., on how the mobile technology sector is contributing know-how and resources to improve lives, particularly in rural regions of developing countries, both philanthropically and for business reasons.


PTA Expects Further Growth in Telecom Investment Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is expecting that total investments would grow to Rs 393 billion whereas total revenue will reach Rs 387 billion by 2010 in telecom sector. According to PTA's vision 2010, prepared to further develop the sector, the mobile penetration is expected to grow up to 57 percent and in this regard activation charges and withholding tax levied on telecom services are required to be further reduced to increase the potential market. There is a potential of 3 to 5 million broadband customers. It says since WiMAX and VoIP can create another revolution in Pakistan, a legal framework of SIP/VOIP is also required. Accordingly

fixed number portability and symmetric termination rate framework should also be developed to increase the fixed (wire/wireless) density. Under the vision, the Authority made projections for different telecom indicators including potential telecom market, subscriber growth and investment. With consolidation of the market, new international players in the WiMAX Broadband Market will replace small ISPs and local WiMAX operation, PTA therefore plans to further facilitate mergers & acquisitions and make more spectrums available for wireless operations.


Canon in Dawn All About Lifestyles Exhibition Canon made a significant impact in the recently ended Dawn All About lifestyles exhibition held at the Expo Centre in Karachi. All Canon products including the Digital Compact Cameras, the DSLRs, the Camcorders, printers and scanners & projectors were on display. New models of the Digital Compact Cameras were on display. In the Power Shot genre the G9, S5 IS, SX100 IS, A 720 IS & A 650 IS were the ones most discussed apart from the huge line-up of the Power Shot series. In the IXUS series new models such as the IXUS 960 IS & the 850 IS were the mostly commented upon with their extra ordinary features. In the DSLR segment the EOS 40D was widely looked upon apart from the upcoming entry level EOS 450D. Also on display was the huge line-up of Canon printers including the LaserJet(s), multifunction(s) and the ever popular photo-printers. The activities at the Canon stall included live photo sessions of families, kids and portraitures with the added feature of live printing via the Selphy photo-compact printers; the tag line behind the Selphy printers is to "Make Someone happy". So people were coming in flocks and having themselves shot with the Canon digital cameras and getting the end result in the form of a hard copy of their memories of the expo centre. Secondly, Canon was on the look-out for a "Face of the month" model

Mr. Khursheed Abbas, GM - MBM, The authorized distributor of Canon along with Mr. Kazuto Ogawa, The President of Canon Singapore during the annual Gala event in Singapore in Jan 2008, MBM received the Achievement recognition in sales and brand development in Pakistan last year.

which was held at the Canon stall. Finally on the third day "Face of the month award was given to an individual.


Mobilink Offers In-flights Mobile Phone Service Mobilink has unveiled yet another landmark achievement by being the only operator in Pakistan to offer in-flight mobile phone service onboard international flights. Partnering with OnAir, Mobilink offers GSM network onboard aircraft, allowing passengers to not only use their mobile phones for making and receiving calls and text messages, but also enabling them to send and receive data over GPRS. Air France has become the first airline in the world to offer this service on international flights. Using the Mobile OnAir system, Mobilink subscribers traveling onboard one of the Airbus A318 aircraft operating on European routes can avail SMS and MMS services, exchange emails and browse the web using any phone with Internet access. Customers will be able to make and receive phone calls in the second phase of the trial period, as the service is being regulated to maintain passengers' comfort and well-being.

Mobile OnAir enables passengers to use their GSM mobile phones and smart phones, such as Blackberry, during flights - after takeoff and before landing. The service supports voice communications and text messaging, as well as General Packet Radio Services (GPRS). Mobile On Air works like a roaming service on ground. It is billed by the passenger's home mobile operator. To use the service, passengers with an international roaming subscription simply switch on their mobile phones on a Mobile OnAir-equipped aircraft. When a mobile phone is logged on to On Air's network, the display will show "OnAir" and the passenger can start to use their phone as normal. Mobilink promises to maintain its technology leadership and customer satisfaction by offering more state-of-the-art services in the near future.
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Indian Govt. Gives 22 More Telecom Licences The Indian government issued 22 more telecom licences to new players, including Tata Teleservices and Shyam Telelink, but may stop giving more in Rajasthan, Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh, Shyam Telelink has been given licences for two circles in Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh and may get for other circles as well, senior officials in the Department of Telecom told media. With the issuance of 22 new licences, the total number of new licences has gone to 88 in India. Besides Shyam, Tata Teleservices also bagged licences for the remaining circles of Jammu and Kashmir, NorthEast and Assam while the Loop Telecom got for nine circles.

B K Modi-led Spice Telecom also got licence for Delhi, officials said. In all, 120 new licenses would be issued and the process may be completed this month, they added. On the next step to allocate spectrum (radio frequency), the officials remained non-committal saying a final decision is yet to be taken. In any case, they have to apply for the air waves first, they said. Meanwhile, some of the new players have already initiated discussions with the equipment manufacturers to start setting up network in their respective circles so that services could be started as soon as the spectrum was allocated.


Warid Telecom Reduces Call Charges in Uganda The telecom price battle is on, with callers emerging winners as operators struggle for subscriber supremacy in Uganda. Callers can now pay as little as Shs249 to call from Warid telecom's network to any other network. This follows a 33 per cent reduction in the telecom operator's charges for its subscribers calling other networks to Shs299 from Shs449 (peak time) and to Shs249 from Shs349 (off peak). The new rates have previously been a reserve for only subscribers on the Warid network. Ms Miriam Wanjohji - the Warid Marketing Manager Corporate Brand, said the new rates are meant to give the company's customers extra leeway to communicate. "We have lowered our rates to other networks to give our customers more freedom to talk," she said in a press release. A mini-survey by Daily Monitor revealed that many people were reluctant to join the network

because of the high charges on calls to other networks. The lower tariffs are seen as baits to attract more customers from other networks that earlier lowered their rates to Shs320 (MTN and UTL) following the entry of Warid into the market. "This is a 33 per cent drop compared to our launch price which was Shs449 (peak)," Ms Wanjohji said. She added that Warid's Friends and Family profile also attracts a 50 per cent discount. Warid customers also have an opportunity to call their five preferred friends at Shs149 (peak time) and Shs124 (off peak). A Warid SIM card costs Shs3,000 and comes preloaded with 50 free Short Messaging Services (SMS) to any network and Shs1,000 free airtime. For messages, Warid says only delivered SMS are charged.


Jaxtr Gives VoIP Users Something to Talk About After a wildly successful beta launch in terms of user numbers, VoIP (define) provider Jaxtr launched its official 1.0 release. During its 11-month beta period, Jaxtr said it attracted over 10 million users to its service. A key element of the official launch is café jaxtr, a website where users of the phone service can find each other online and new people to talk to. "When we launched Jaxtr last March, we said we're a social communications company. We saw this as an emergent market," Jaxtr CEO Konstantin Guericke told media at his company's headquarters. Guericke has solid experience in social networks, as he is also a co-founder of LinkedIn. But, he also is quick to say café jaxtr is meant to complement, not replace social networks. He calls café jaxtr a "talk network" versus social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace which are relatively silent if not as interactive. Users can list photos of themselves and interests at café jaxtr and things they like to talk about. They can then use the Jaxtr service to call someone or some thing they're interested in. However, user's contact info is not listed by default, they have to proactively enter information to make themselves available should they choose to be. In a demonstration of the service, café jaxtr pages had several ads for dating services and Guericke said that will likely be a big area of interest. But, he also expects the site to be popular for certain professional segments, such as real estate agents and recruiters who want to be able to

reach out and make a more personal connection with potential customers. Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang thinks the service will have niche appeal and that most consumers will be wary of talking to complete strangers. "A phone call is on a level that's so personal and time consuming, I can see this working more with people who already have an existing relationship," Owyang told. "But it could work for specific situations or a need someone has to, for example, talk to someone knowledgeable in a specific area," he added. He also notes there are many other places to chat on the Web even if it's not audio. To date, Jaxtr has seen most of its growth outside the United States where demand for low-cost and free alternatives to traditional long distance charges is highest. Guericke said about 15 percent of Jaxtr's users are in the U.S., the second highest region to India at 17 percent. The United Kingdom and China are the third and fourth highest areas of Jaxtr use, respectively. "Since we let you make international calls for free, we want to highlight café jaxtr's global dimension," said Guericke. Thinking back to an exchange program he was involved in high school, the German-born Guericke mused services like this might aid the cause of world peace. "Maybe if we have more one-to-one exchanges we'd be less likely to bomb the country we're talking to," he said.


Mobile Phones Remain Silent in Parts of Helmand

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The mobile phone companies in Afghanistan are seemed to have bowed down before Taliban threat and the phone connections of Afghan Wirless Communication Company (AWCC) and Roshan remained silent in several areas of Halmand late night on Feb 28. Signals of AWCC and Roshan remained off in our areas while were also off in Musa Qala and Sangin districts, a resident of village, 20 km from Laghkargah, capital of Halmand province, told Afghan Islamic Press

(AIP). Taliban had asked the mobile phone companies three days back to switch off signals at night as American were observing phone calls to ascertain the destination of the caller. Though there was no reaction by mobile phone companies, it appears that they comply with the demand of Taliban. However, communication ministry in Kabul strongly rejected claim of Taliban.


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U.S. Telecom Growth Slower than Others The U.S. telecommunications industry will grow at a slower rate than the global industry in the coming years as the wireless and wired markets mature, the Telecommunications Industry Association said. According to a study commissioned by the TIA, the U.S. telecom industry will grow at an average annual rate of 7.2 percent in the period 2008-2011, reaching $1.3 trillion in 2011, compared with an average rate of 10 percent, reaching $3.6 trillion, for the rest of the world. Growth in the U.S. industry will accelerate to 9.3 percent in 2008 from 8.3 percent in 2007, partly due to spending on network upgrades and a government spectrum auction. Growth is expected to moderate in the following years, the report said. "License fees associated with the 700MHz auction will boost revenue in 2008, and the absence of that revenue will lead to a sharp drop in 2009," it said. The biggest U.S. telephone companies are Verizon Communications and AT&T.

The study expects the strongest 2008-2011 growth in the Asia-Pacific region, with a 13 percent annual advance, followed by 11.1 percent for the Middle East and Africa, and 10.5 percent for Latin America. European telecom growth will be just ahead of the United States at 7.5 percent annually, while Canada is expected to be the slowest region with 5.4 percent annually. According to the study, about 35 percent of U.S. wireless service revenue will come from data services such as mobile Web surfing in 2011, up from 16 percent in 2007. With Web traffic for services such as Internet video soaring, the study found that in wired networks "current capacity will soon be unable to support bandwidth demand." This is in contrast with the commonly held view in 2003 that "there would be excess network capacity for the foreseeable future."


Telecom Providers Enter Fiber Optic Pay-TV Market American telecom carriers have started a major revolution in the multi-play entertainment and communication industry over the past couple of years, by rolling out subscription-based fiber-optic television services in dozens of U.S. cities. Big telephone incumbents like AT&T and Verizon are spending billions of dollars to deploy massive fiberoptic internet and video networks across the nation, in the hope of better competing with cable companies in the broadband and television markets. Industry analysts expect these fiber-optic television offerings to experience massive growth in the long-term, as carriers launch advanced interactive video services, and deliver television via cell phones and the internet, increasingly blurring the lines between telecommunications and entertainment.

In terms of network availability and service penetration, Verizon's FiOS TV has emerged as America's most successful IPTV service to date. FiOS has challenged video incumbents like Comcast and Cablevision in markets across the country, to serve over 300,000 households in ten states. AT&T's U-verse offering, meanwhile, was deployed somewhat later than FiOS, but has been rapidly expanding its user base since early 2007. Fiber-optic television services have also been deployed in Canada, where one of the major telecom incumbents, Telus Corp., is aggressively challenging cable rival, Shaw Communications in the western province of Alberta.


Google Submarine Cable to Spike Internet Growth A new fiber-optic connection under the sea could increase Internet capacity between the U.S. and Japan. Web search company Google has agreed to build an undersea cable with five telecom operators that will link the United States to Japan and provide the capacity to sustain a surge in Internet traffic between the con-

tinents. Google and the five telecom companies said in a joint statement that the 10,000-kilometer (6,200 mile) undersea fiber-optic cable, connecting the United States to Japan, will cost $300 million.


Samsung Unveils Its First VOIP Thin Client Monitor Samsung Electronics , a world-leading manufacturer of professional LCD and PDP display products, has unveiled the new Sync Master 220TN monitor, the company's first V2oIP-enabled network monitor. "Featuring a built-in camera, microphone and speaker, the Sync Master 220TN monitor facilitates true-to-life web conferencing, which can reduce longdistance phone costs and the need for frequent business travel. With a 22" wide screen and a 2.0M pixel camera, the 220TN monitor is enabled to support multiple work applications, therefore enhancing productivity in a range of professional settings." explained Shahid Khan, Head of Marketing, Samsung Electronics. The 220TN monitor is a thin client solution, or a centrally-managed network computer that lacks a hard-disk drive. Leveraging a thin client system, the monitor not only facilitates streamlined communication - it also facilitates increased security, since no application data resides in the actual model. On account of its thin client capabilities, the 220TN is an ideal choice for applications that require secure deployment, such as air-

port kiosks, hotel lobbies and hospitals. "In an increasingly globalized workforce, many professionals require a simplified, cost-effective, yet reliable, medium for communicating with co-workers and clients across the globe" added Shahid. "With the Sync Master 220TN monitor, Samsung has delivered a streamlined, intuitive solution for enterprise customers that demand a seamless and secure communication experience, whether communicating across cubicles or across continents." With a high resolution of 1680 x 1050, coupled with a wide 16:10 aspect ratio, the Sync Master 220TN monitor offers superior image quality and enhanced productivity for a range of professional applications. Featuring a 5 ms GTG response time, a 700:1 contrast ratio and 300cd/m2 brightness, the model is equipped to produce crisp, trueto-life images, while the wide 170/160 viewing angle further enhances the overall viewing experience.
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Yahoo Unveils onePlace Bookmarking Tool The company uses the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover to launch a care about, that you're passionate about, that you follow," Boerries said. new dynamic bookmarking tool for mobile phones. Against the backdrop Users will be able to gather their favorite web places either by of a $41 billion (£20.7 billion) takeover bid by Microsoft, Yahoo used this choosing them on their PC and then synchronising with their mobile week's CeBIT technology fair in Hanover to unveil a mobile phone tool phone, or directly on the device itself. that lets users keep up with their favorite topics using dynamic bookAs with oneSearch, actual information will be shown rather than web marks. links, often awkward to navigate on a mobile phone. Users would be OnePlace, to be launched in the second quarable to get the service either through operators ter, allows users to mark links, news feeds or who have Yahoo deals or download it from Yahoo, search results that lead them to, for example, the Boerries said. latest information on flight arrivals, sports results or Boerries said onePlace was the last major piece friends' Facebook postings. of Yahoo's consumer offering for mobile, which it Bookmarking tools are not new - Yahoo's has been working on for three years, leaving it free del.icio.us is one - but Yahoo says it has reinvented to focus on making money from it. bookmarking for phones, given their small screens "The consumer experience is not done but it's and different user requirements, with placeholders at a stage where it can now evolve," he said. "My linked to updated info instead of a fixed page. foreseeable focus for the future is to build the right "You have something that's always changing. advertising model." A Google worker dials her cell phone. You could always just bookmark a site as a placeYahoo already has advertising deals with carriers holder but now it's alive," Marco Boerries, who is leading Yahoo's including T-Mobile, Vodafone and AT&T, but the question the industry mobile drive, said in an interview at the CeBIT IT fair in Hanover, faces now is how to develop the form to better fit the mobile phone's Germany. small screen and target consumers better. Yahoo is racing to leapfrog Google's clear lead in computer search "We did the simple stuff really early and that's how we're making and advertising by custom-building services for mobiles and forming money right now, but that's not the way forward," Boerries said. "We're alliances with operators that already give it access to 600 million mobile nowhere near where we could be." phone users. Although Boerries declined to say how long it could take to come up Yahoo aims to reach 750 million users this year by adding to a partwith a new model but argued Yahoo could help pull it together. "What's ner list that includes Telefonica, AT&T and Deutsche Telekom's Tinhibiting advertisers right now is (that) it's too complicated with all the Mobile. different platforms," he said, referring to the variety of mobile phone OnePlace also leans on two other Yahoo mobile services operating systems that exists. oneSearch and oneConnect - by tailoring the content behind the bookBoerries said ads should enhance and not obstruct normal phone marks to match the location of users and the preferences and activities use, such as returning useful, sponsored information in web search of friends and contacts who use the service. results. "The challenge is to create a system that the user is super, "We're not reinventing forms of mobile content or getting into the super happy to access," he said.
content business but there are places where you have stuff that you

Excessive use of Computers Affects Eyes Too much of viewing the world through a computer may not be good for own eyes, warn experts after reviewing eye-related complaints that they get nowadays. Excessive exposure to the computer monitor affects eyes in many ways. More and more people are complaining of redness, itching and feeling of dryness in their eyes due to sitting in front of the computer for long hours. Experts say that these problems largely emerge due to insufficient blinking of the eyes while working at the computer. The eye blinks about 10-15 times every minute. When sitting in front of computer, this rate of blinking decreases by about 30 to 40 percent. Blinking of the eye is important to maintain the fluid balance in the eye. At each time when eye blinks, a layer of fluid is spread evenly on the

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Indian attendants arrange a cellular telephone display on a stand at The Mobile Asia 2008 exibition in New Delh. The exhibition which is being held in the Indian capital, claims to be India's biggest consumer mobile event and hopes to attract some 300,000 visitors over the course of the event.

surface. Reduction in the supply of this fluid causes the itching and dryness in the eyes. Other symptoms that are commonly experienced include an inability to focus, frequent headaches and irritability. Experts also suggest some ways to alleviate the effects. One must ensure that the lighting in the room is sufficient and the glare of the monitor is reduced. Anti-glare screens may also be used for this purpose. A person working on the computer must take a break every half an hour and should preferably wash his eyes with cold water during that time. The eyes should be closed for a minute as soon as any strain is experienced. Artificial teardrops could be used in case there is a problem of eye lubrication. With an increase in the dependency on computers in our every day lives, routine eye check up becomes more important than ever before.


This combo picture released by Osaka University researcher Kazuhiro Taniguchi, shows prototype devices infrared to operate digital music player or other electronic devices at his laboratory in Osaka, western Japan.

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Eastern Europe's Broadband Subscribers to Surpass 40 Million by 2012 According to the information released by HOT TELECOM in its latest report "Eastern Europe statistics and forecast 2002-2011", there were an estimated 29.5 million broadband subscribers at the end of June 2007 in Eastern Europe. This translated into a 23.4% growth over the first six months of the year. By the end of the forecasted period, broadband should account for 80.9% of all Internet connections in the region, compared with 48.2% currently, as the number of broadband subscribers is forecasted to have grown by an average of 28.8% to 40.1 million. Broadband is rapidly gaining momentum, driven by increasing competition and extensive deployment of DSL and/or cable services. DSL is growing in popularity, most notably in Slovakia and Russia, whilst in Ukraine, cable has overtaken DSL for the first time. DSL currently accounts for 63.2% of the broadband connections in the region and this ratio is forecasted to reach 67.8% in 2011. Poland and Russia have enjoyed the highest levels of absolute broadband subscriber growth over the last 5 years, together accounting for

46.7% of the region's subscribers at the end of June 2007. Russia leads with an estimated 3.8 million subscribers, followed by Poland with 2.9 million and Romania with 2.3 million. Estonia is currently leading in terms of broadband access, with 298,000 subscribers and a penetration of 22.9%. Ukraine on the other hand, which is one of the region's top fixed and mobile markets, continues to be relatively undeveloped in terms of Internet and broadband penetration, largely due to poor infrastructure and low availability of residential broadband. At the end of June 2007, Ukraine 's broadband penetration stood at 0.6%. This report, which includes 31 detailed exhibits and tables on Eastern Europe 's telecom market, confirms that the smaller, less developed, low penetration countries will show great broadband growth potential in years to come. "Countries such as Albania, Belarus, Serbia, Bosnia and Ukraine will be the most dynamic in this sector, with forecasted average growth rates of 454.8%, 110.8%, 74.9%, 64.9% and 54.6% respectively over the next 5 years" HOT TELECOM's president Isabelle Paradis said.


Carriers Warned Over Promise of Fibre, HDTV Carriers have been warned not to bet the farm on high definition TV services as a way of reversing the revenue decline in the fixed line market. Instead, analysts have advised European operators to keep their focus on investment in core and service delivery architectures, creating a clear roadmap for their own managed services portfolio. Stephen Sale, analyst at research house Analysys, thinks that too many operators are putting all their eggs in the HD TV basket, and argues that the revenue uplift from higher speed access will not be enough to reverse the gradual decline in wireline revenue for the typical European incumbent. "The scale of the TV market simply isn't great enough to compensate for the accelerating declines in legacy services," Sale said. "Telcos do not have a big enough differentiator in TV; even the most optimistic ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) projections for triple play will not boost a typical incumbent's top line by more than about 3 per cent, and an NGA strategy without rapid core transformation does not begin to address the long term problem of rationalising a legacy of multiple network overlays." Analysys believes that investment in the core network and IT-transformation projects can deliver real cash cost savings, enabling fast moving

Next-Generation Network operators to exercise more control over the core transmission market. "Investment in fibre may look radical, but it's fundamentally quite conservative because it's essentially a defence of Carriers warned over promise of fibre, fixed broadband, rather than a growth HDTV services strategy, and because it still locates a telco's main assets in physical networks rather than service delivery capability," said Rupert Wood, principal analyst at Analysys. "But it won't be enough to create an enabling platform that offers faster time to market - the revenue streams are too undefined." Wood claims that the opportunities to deliver novel business services on the back of the new service functionality are greater than in the consumer multimedia space. "Within a five-to-ten year timeframe, an operator focusing its investment in core and service-delivery architecture could expect both higher revenue and higher margins than one investing mainly in access," the analyst said.


EMC to invest in Telecom The US-based information management company EMC is looking to boost its presence in the Middle East telecom market to cash in on the booming pace of growth in the region, executives said. The company, which in the past few years has turned its focus on growth outside the US market, said the Middle East is one of the fastest-growing international markets and it plans to step up investment. "We see high growth in the region, [the market] has good momentum and we're going to continue to invest wherever we get good returns," Vice-Chairman, Bill Teuber, said.. Speaking on the sidelines of the fifth EMC Middle East Telecoms Summit, Teuber added that the company looks at market shares and overall growth rates when planning expansions. "Some of these countries have relatively low revenues but high growth rates so we're looking to make sure we're a part of the infrastructure of

many of these countries as they mature," he said. Though Teuber declined to comment on how much EMC is looking to invest in the Middle East this year, he said the firm has a "very strong cash flow", with about $8 billion (Dh29.3bn) in cash and investments. "Emerging markets are going to be absolutely critical to the growth rate and the success of EMC. We need to be in these areas and countries," he said. EMC, which has its regional headquarters in Dubai and offices in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, is set to open offices in Qatar and Pakistan, while aiming to increase investments in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. "We're going to balance investments around the GCC and the Middle East," said Mohammed Amin, regional manager of EMC.
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rance Telecom-owned Orange Business Services has finalised a joint venture partnership with Indian storage devices manufacturer Moser Baer Ltd to foray into the long distance telephony segment. The company is awaiting clearance from the Department of Telecom for obtaining the licence. Orange Business Services has been offering enterprise communication solutions to large multinationals in India. However, it has now applied for a licence after the Government made it mandatory for companies to obtain a national long distance licence for offering IP-based services such as virtual private network. The company is not expected to foray into the retail long distance telephony segment. France Telecom is one of the largest telecom service providers in Europe. It had earlier exited from the Indian market after it sold out its stake in BPL Mobile. However, recently, it had acquired GTL's IT unit in a bid to enhance its offering in the country. Senior DoT officials said that the company's application was being processed. When contacted Orange Business Services said, "India is a key market for Orange Business Services and we will take all essential steps that will help us serve better our multinational customers in this country. We are looking at expanding our licence portfolio in India and will make an announcement at an appropriate time." Indian enterprise communications segment has become highly competitive with the entry of global telecom companies including AT&T, BT and Cable & Wireless. While AT&T and BT have already launched their services, others including Verizon are in the process of obtaining Government clearances. Orange Business has already got the permission from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board. There are also Internet service providers including Tulip IT and Sify fighting for the same pie. Indian telecom players Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication and Tata Telservices are also in the fray as large multina




tional companies expand their business network into the country.

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ndia's telecom story is shining. The country has become the fastest growing telecom market in the world, adding a staggering 83 million mobile subscribers over the last 12 months. At this pace, India is all set to overtake US to become the world's second largest mobile market by May this year or just another three months. Around February last year, India overtook Russia to become the third largest mobile market. India's total mobile subscriber base now stands at 237 million in comparison with China's 534 million, US's 257 million and Russia's 172 million. At current growth rates, India will cross the 264 million mark by May, overtaking the US. According to the latest data available from Informer Telecoms and Media, 83 million is the highest number of subscribers added to any mobile network in the world between February 2007 and January 2008. China, which used to be the fastest growing till 2006, added just 76 million subscribers in the

apan successfully launched an experimental satellite aimed at providing high-speed Internet access across Asia, even when terrestrial infrastructure goes down, the space agency said. The domestically developed H-2A rocket carrying the Kizuna satellite was launched at 0855 GMT on last Saturday with no glitches from the Space Centre on Tanegashima off the southern tip of Kyushu Island, southern Japan. The communications satellite, expected to be in use for five years, separated from the rocket approximately 35 minutes after the launch. The 342 million dollar-Kizuna will allow super-high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps, which would make it the fastest in the world. That rate would translate to 150 times that of the average high-speed ADSL connection rate of 8 Mbps, or 12 times the speed of a fibre-optic communication delivery to a personís premises (FTTP). The Kizuna, which also means ìbondî in Japanese, is expected to begin transmitting and receiving data with terrestrial infrastructure in July after completing preparations and confirming the satelliteís safety. Japan is looking to use the satellite to allow communication when a

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ground-based network is severed by a disaster in any Asian country, in which case it would be used to transmit data to crisis management offices. The agency is hoping it can also be used as an educational or medical tool to reach people in remote or mountainous areas. Internet is now an integral part of our lives; but its infrastructure levels vary. The satellite will enable students in Asian countries to communicate smoothly and with no time lag among one another, as if they were in the same classroom, it said. The expected life of the satellite is five years, an agency




spokeswoman said.

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same period, showing signs of a mild but definite slowdown. India has not only taken the lead over China in terms of mobile growth for quite some time, the country has also been able to sustain the lead. This shows the stupendous growth and potential of the mobile industry. The good news is that even with 263 million, India's mobile teledensity will still be a mere 24%, allowing tremendous room for growth. Since only 350 million of India's population lives in urban India, the next phase of growth is expected to come from the spread of wireless

services to the rural heartland. The US added a total of 20 million subscribers, pale even in comparison with Pakistan, which added 26 million subscribers, taking its total subscriber base to 79 million. India added an average of 6.9 million subscribers per month in the period under review, China 6.3 million, US 1.6 million, Pakistan 2.1 million and Bangladesh 1.1 million. The telecom sector's achievements come despite policy turmoil around availability and pricing of spectrum, a resource needed for connectivity. India is expected to have 450 million mobile subscribers by the turn of the decade, which means every third Indian will have his/her own mobile phone by 2010. The country has been blazing the telecom trail since 2004, set to add more phones every month than it did in the first 45 years since




Independence.