The revolution has started
The revolution is here and it is time to put the old regime up against the wall!

Progress has been slow, and we have all been waiting for far, far too long.

DVcom was the first to launch a serious attack on the pre-deregulation status quo. With fullpage colour adverts in daily newspapers and well made adverts on the popular TV channels, the BIGtime prepaid calling card launch was, well, big! It made a splash and reduced rates to those previously only available to users of VoIP. As expected international rates were low, but amazingly enough calls within Pakistan are charged at Rs2.50 per minute. I remember when calls from Karachi to Islamabad cost more than some International calls.

We are headed for interesting times!

Mobile.
Telenor and Warid Telecom have some time to go before they launch anything, but they are both advertising heavily and grabbing mindshare now. Paktel and Instaphone are both under threat as is Mobilink with its history of PTCL-like customer service.
Mobilink and Paktel both launched ad campaigns. Mobilink's was classy. Paktel was just plain weird: strange jarring colours and strange looking people.

Local Loop.
Telecard started offering GO CDMA. They had some teething problems with their switch whereby a lot of incoming calls went to voicemail. I personally found the voice quality to be incredibly good, though I am told by Telecard people that they need many more Base stations in Karachi. Maybe, as a user of PTCL and Mobilink services, I have gotten used to bad service.
There is no sign of any local loop service from Worldcall. However that is understandable as they have problems enough running their Internet over Cable service.
- posted @ Wednesday, March 09, 2005