by Mansoor Ehsan on February 5, 2010
[Telecom] Blockbuster Movies on your Mobile-that’s what Audio Cinema by Mobilink Jazz promises to bring in. Mobilink Jazz brings blockbuster movies, with original dialogues & songs to their subscribers’ very own mobile phones! All movies will be available in 60-90 minute duration through an IVR streaming.
Subscription process:
- User can subscribe to this service by dialing IVR short code 606.
- After subscribing to service, users will get the successful subscription notification via SMS.
- After successful subscription of service, users can dial 606 and enjoy the service. [click to continue...]
by Teleco Analyst on March 2, 2009
Pro Pakistan recently covered the price war between the telecom operators in the 30 seconds billing pulse for outgoing voice calls. The details can be found in this post on Zong 65 paisa package. Now that war was hardly over, when Ufone came out with their new and exciting Unlimited SMS package few days ago with Rs. 2.99 per 500 daily sms. This package was surely expected to start a new price war but this time it was not the voice segment but the Value Added Services (VAS) segment. Yesterday, Mobilink came out with something very much similar to that of Ufone Unlimited SMS package but with a slightly lower rate of Rs. 2.79 per 500 daily sms. The interesting thing is that except 20 paisa lower rate, no other difference can be found in the packages. Being the market leader, Mobilink will surely take a much bigger hit as compared to Ufone, since any price decline always results in revenue loss. The price war in VAS will surely have very negative impact on the overall profitability of the telecom operators as voice rates have already touched rock bottom. If this trend continues for some time, i am sure that the operators will be forced to lay off few more employees to keep their businesses give stable base line results.
The details of the Mobilink SMS Bundle Offer are as following for the ready reference of our readers.
Jazz brings bigger and better SMS bundle offer for all networks. After the success of SMS Fever in the past, Jazz again proves that the brand provides value & economy to its users nationwide. This latest Jazz SMS Bundle offer has rates that apply to all networks and gives Jazz users a widening spectrum to reach friends & family through SMS. [click to continue...]
by Teleco Analyst on February 25, 2009
www.pro-pakistan.com
Telenor Pakistan has performed really good in the fourth and last quarter of 2008 as per the reports even though the third quarter was a real disappointment for everyone. The major highlights for the 4th Quarter 2008 are given below as per their reports:
• The number of subscribers increased by 916,000 during the quarter, while the estimated subscription market share remained stable at 21%.
• ARPU in local currency decreased by 13% as both average usage and prices declined due to increased competition and the general economic slowdown in Pakistan.
• Total revenues in local currency increased by 20% mainly due to a subscription growth of approximately 5 million during 2008, partially offset by lower ARPU.
• EBITDA increased by 51% in local currency mainly due to higher revenue growth. The EBITDA margin improved by 9 percentage points compared to the previous quarter primarily due to a 9% revenue growth and increased usage of own fi bre network.
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by Teleco Analyst on February 7, 2009
Zong has just joined the current 30 seconds fever that is going on the telecom industry of Pakistan by coming out with truly the lowest rates in the industry for 30 seconds billing pulse.
Pro Pakistan was the first to predict that a new wave of price war will erupt when Telenor came out with Telenor Talkshawk package with flat 75 paisa per 30 seconds call rate (Telenor TalkShawk 75 Paisa Call Rate). We also covered the continuation of the price war with the Mobilink Jazz Budget New rate of 68 paisa for all out going calls. If that was not enough Ufone came out with its Ufone 3 minutes package which was a very smart move since it didn’t join the price war technically yet its package was price at 66 paisas. In all those posts, we were constantly predicting that the price war will keep going unless someone puts a stop to it.
Following are the details of the package for the ready reference of our readers along with the FAQ’s.
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by MJK on February 7, 2009
The Pakistani telecom industry is facing a slowdown as explained in detail by Shahbaz Khan in an earlier article on Pro Pakistan titled “Pakistan Cellular Market on a Downward Slide“. The slowdown has resulted in reduction in the acquisition of new subscribers and hence cast a new negative spell on the continuous growth for the telecom operators. If that was not enough, the government implemented the abolition of pre-activated sims in the market and hence further slowed down the growth to a standstill.
Now that the revenue side is not giving any positive outlook, companies are forced to look towards their cost side and hence will try to rationalize it to show a steady growth in their overall profitability. The focus on rationalizing cost is already evident in the telecom industry of Pakistan. I will share with you few of the cost rationalization strategies that are generally used by telecom wireless operators in the low ARPU markets.
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by Teleco Analyst on January 25, 2009
When Mobile Policy of Pakistan was approved in January 2004, Ministry of Information Technology (MOIT) set specific objectives to be achieved by the policy with major goals of increasing choice for customer at competitive & affordable prices, private investment and fair competition amongst mobile and fixed line operators.
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by Teleco Analyst on January 25, 2009
On 18th December, 2008 i wrote a post predicting a new price war taking place in the telecom industry. The price war has been initiated by Zong. As we all witnessed, the earlier price war resulted in the decrease in call charges to a minimum of Rs. 0.75 per 30 second for all networks. In fact Telenor was the one to come out with this new flat pricing for all outgoing calls but the Significant Market Player (SMP) Mobilink has given its response to their flat pricing campaign of Talk Shawk with their new JAzz Budget rates.
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by Teleco Analyst on January 20, 2009
As soon as the new government presented the budget in June 08, the cellular industry was given little credit for the contribution towards economy of country and additional taxes were implemented in form of 21% GST compared to 15% previously, Handset duty of Rs 750 previously no handset duty and continuation of Rs 500 activation tax. The affects of all these short sighted policies are becoming visible with the cellular market showing negative (-) growth consecutively for the 2nd month. The recent market status according to PTA, show that the industry witness -0.6% growth in month of Dec 08 by cellular market decreasing from 90.4 million to 89.9 million a decline of 0.5 million in a month. [click to continue...]
by Teleco Analyst on December 17, 2008
Today Zong came out with its own BBFD offer in response to recent Mobilink BBFD. The BBFD offer of Mobilink made sense since being the oldest operator and the market leader, it was getting the maximum hit in the form of subscribers deactivation.
The offer by Zong is very attractive but it does reveal something to everyone. Being a relatively new operator, its inactive subscribers are supposed to be very less as compared to other operators who have already crossed around 10 million subscribers and are in the market for few years. As per industry benchmarks, generally new operators have very less churn in the first year of its operation and the inactive subscribers ratio is also very low. Now the BBFD offer by Zong is either in response to similar offers by other operators or they are really suffering from high subscribers inactivation ratio. In case of prior, i think they are just destorying the whole industry and in case of later, Zong is in troubling waters.
In its BBFD offer, Zong is providing 100 free onnet minutes and 100 free sms on the first recharge of Rs. 100 on all those connections who are inactive since 1st September, 2008. Not only this, the customers will also get free 30% onnet minutes and sms on every subsequent recharge of at least Rs. 50 for the whole year. This is a bit too much and i wonder how they were able to justify this package financially to their top management.
Anyways, lets see how big impact this BBFD offer will have on their limited number of customers who will avail this offer. Through this offer, they won’t be adding any new customers but the existing customers, who were inactive might get back on their network with a high cost to the company.
