Telecoms, internet in Pakistan

Everyone in IT and too many who had nothing to do with IT were at ITCN.

Arwen Technologies spent a rumoured Rs2 million on their stand. Lets hope that it was worth it.

Former Chairman PTCL, PTA and PEMRA , Mian Jawed was in town and warmly received at all the Telecom stalls. He was a guest of Xnet Solutions and officially opened their stand and launched their new firewall.

The Corps Commander swept in with machine guns guarding every aisle.

Aaj TV had a stand but no one and nothing in it. Maybe they had better things to do.

Mobilink had a heavily attended and at times mobbed, stand, whereas Warid next door was more reserved.

The most important (and low key) happening was the “1st International Netowrker’s Conference 2005″ organised by Mr Nadeem of the Networkers Society of Pakistan. Very technical and quite interesting especially the talks by Khalid Raza of Cisco and a person from Junitper.
he announcement that a hands on workshop of upto 8 days would be held next year. This workshop will cover BGP as well as other technologies. If Bangladesh can set up something like http://www.bdix.net/ then there is no reason why Pakistan cannot do so as well. With 2 or maybe even 3 countrywide fibreoptic networks being setup being able to use BGP will become very important for the survival of ISPs.
The Internet business is not something where you install machinery and then milk it for 20 years. It is fast moving and 5 years is a very very long time. ISPs will have to learn how to work together and co-operate otherwise they will go the way Compunet went.

Rates for termination of calls to Pakistan are down.

Pakistan - Mobile and Proper $0.1100 USD

Thats 11 cents per minute. One year ago the rates were 18 cents on the Grey market, more for PTCL.