MyAdhan Blog

Link: UAE: Etisalat sets up SMS spam blocking service

Etisalat is taking steps to block the flow of SMS spam, with the deployment of a spam blocking solution from Irish mobile security company Etisalat customers to be protected from mobile spam with AdaptiveMobile solution AdpativeMobile. The UAE telco will roll out AdaptiveMobile’s PolicyFilter SMS to automatically cut out spam sent from outside the Emirates, to protect Etisalat’s 6.4 customers from unwanted text messages. The solution has been customized to screen both English and Arabic language messages, although it will only block spam SMS sent from outside the country. Essa AlHaddad, Etisalat’s chief marketing officer commented: “Etisalat is extremely vigilant towards the protection of the individual and we rely heavily on the technology delivered by companies such as AdaptiveMobile to offer our customers total peace of mind. Our subscribers do not want to receive SMS SPAM and Etisalat’s pro-active approach to security compels us to continually look at measures that can be adopted to maintain the quality of service on our network and that will support us in ensuring the well-being and satisfaction of our customers.”

Link: Make money with TextTv in Middle East

TextTV, a text messaging platform that lets TV viewers interact with each other by sending text messages directly to the TV screen. Through TextTV and at specified times, viewers can send text messages and watch those messages scroll across the bottom of the screen.All messages are filtered. TV networks can also use TextTV to poll the audience or tie a messaging session to a particular TV program. TextTV makes interactive television a reality. It allows audience members to interact with their television using the mobile phone they already have. Using TextTV, stations can engage their audiences, extend viewership and create entirely new sponsorship opportunities. TextTV is very popular among the Arab community and it can be easily set up in the middle east.It is inexpensive as well and Companies who have set up TextTv’s in the middle east are already making lot of money and there are more opportunities for new players. Mobile Operators in this region know the potential of TextTv and are already providing shortcodes for interactivity.

Link: Pakistani authorities ban access to YouTube

Update: How a System Error in Pakistan Shut YouTube

More Links:
Pakistan bans access to YouTube
Pakistan blocks YouTube
Pakistan blocks YouTube over anti-Islamic content

Pakistani authorities on Friday banned access to the popular video-hosting website YouTube for allegedly featuring blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority directed Internet service providers across the country to block access to youtube.com. A statement issued to customers by Micronet Broadband, one of Pakistan’s leading internet service providers said, ‘Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to YouTube for containing blasphemous web content/movies’. The website would remain blocked till further orders from the PTA. Micronet urged Internet users to ‘write to YouTube to remove the objectionable web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order un-blocking of this website’. The blasphemous cartoons had triggered widespread protests across Pakistan when they were originally published. Pakistan’s foreign ministry recently registered a strong protest with the Danish government against the republication of the cartoons in that country.

Link: PTA to participate in TeleCON 2008

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has confirmed the participation of Major-Gen (R) Shahzada Alam Malik, Chairman PTA, at TeleCON’2008 - the 2-day Global Telecommunication Congress being held on April 29-30, 2008 in Karachi. Pakistan’s first 2-Day Global Telecommunication Congress with a special emphasis on Challenges & Opportunities in the new era of digitalised and wireless environment has already attracted the attention of prolific international and Pakistani speakers from the telecom industry, including delegates both from the business, technical, academia and information-technology sectors. Menin Rodrigues, President & CEO of the SHAMROCK Group said “We are delighted to have received the recognition and support of PTA and look forward to the participation of all key players in the industry at the Congress. Pakistan is at the crossroads of an economic challenge and I am sure the telecom sector will be the critical factor in assessing the confidence of investors in the imminent future.” He hoped that the 2008 Global Telecommunication Congress would bring together top names from both government and industry to share their local and international perspectives.

Link: Mobily’s founders plan to sell 100 million shares

The founding shareholders of Mobily (Etihad Etisalat), Saudi Arabian mobile telephone operator, intend to sell 100 million shares of the stock that they own, and have informed the company accordingly. Mobily’s founders are the UAE’s Emirates Telecommunications Corp., which owns a 35-per cent stake. Six Saudi institutional investors including the state-run Public Pension Agency and the General Organisation for Social Insurance (GOSI) have 45 per cent of the company’s shares. It was announced recently that the board of directors had taken two crucial decisions regarding the sale of shares by its founding shareholders and the increase of its capital. T he founding shareholders will offer to sell 20 per cent of their shares to local and foreign investors during the third year of the company’s lifetime. According to Khaled Al Kaf, Mobily chief executive, the company has already taken the approval from the Saudi Capital Market Authority (CMA), the stock market regulator, to complete the process. CMA Chairman Abdul Rahman Al Tuwaijri had said in a television interview earlier that Saudi Arabia would soon allow foreigners to invest in its stocks and initial public offerings (IPOs). Al Tuwaijri explained that the CMA would allow investment through domestic funds which will be established by licensed firms. Al Kaf said Mobily would raise its capital by 40 per cent, or by SR2 billion to SR7 billion from the current capital of SR5 billion by issuing 100 million new shares.

Link: Indonesian telco Bakrie targets 7 mln wireless subscribers

Publicly-listed telecommunication operator PT Bakire Telecom TBK has set itself the target of enticing 7 million subscribers to its Esia fixed wireless services this year compared to 3.8 million last year. “We have set ourselves the target of enticing 7 million subscribers and will build 1000 base transceiver stations (BTS) in 2008,” the company’s finance director, Jastiro Abi, said following the signing of a cooperation agreement with Bank Interasional Indoneisa (BII) here Wednesday. Bakrie Telecom planned to spend US$232 million on building BTS, backbone networks and information technology systems this year, he said. The 2008 capital expenditures would originate from the disposal of its 8.65 trillion shares worth Rp3 trillion (US$327 million) and the rest from vendor financing, he said.

Link: Saudi Zain IPO oversubscribed by 269%

The initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Zain, the third mobile phone operator in the kingdom, has been oversubscribed by 269 per cent. Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF), the Saudi French Bank, which managed the IPO, said the IPO is the biggest in term of the shares being floated. In a statement following the IPO’s closure, the bank noted that 8.2 million investors purchased 1.7 billion shares worth 17 billion riyals. The telecom operator’s IPO, started last week, ran for ten days. Saudi Zain, an affiliate of Kuwait-based Mobile Tele-communications Company (Zain), is the third largest Arab telecom operator by market value. It owns 25 per cent of the new company. Last year the company agreed to pay 22.9 billion riyals ($6.1 billion) for Saudi Arabia’s third mobile phone licence. Saudi Zain will compete with state-controlled Saudi Telecom Company and Mobily, an affiliate of the UAE’s etisalat. The allocation of shares was performed in two stages. In the first stage, each subscriber will receive 50 shares. In the second stage all subscribers will be allocated a maximum of 1,000 shares each. Meanwhile, BSF said that the bank, along with its foreign partner, Calyon Bank, has recently established a company named Calyon Saudi French Ltd (CSFL). It added that the new company would contribute in promoting investment activities in Saudi Arabia.

Link: Omantel acquires Pakistani Worldcall stake

Omani telco Omantel has confirmed that it has paid USD193 million for a 65% holding in Pakistan’s Worldcall Telecom. It is the operator’s biggest investment outside its home country. The state-owned company said last May that it was in talks to buy a Pakistan telco, identifying Worldcall a month later, but didn’t reveal what it was looking to pay. Omantel has agreed to buy 60% of Worldcall from shareholders and a further 5% through the Pakistani bourse. ‘Entering the Pakistani market is important because it is one of the markets that has the fastest growth rates due to the dense population and low penetration levels in several telecommunication services,’ said Omantel CEO Mohammed al-Wohaibi in a statement. Worldcall offers a range of services in Pakistan including local loop, international calls and internet, and the Omani incumbent believes that its acquisition could boost profits by up to 14%.

Link: Cellphones are bringing Pakistanis together

For nearly seven years, Osama bin Laden, the world’s most-wanted terrorist, has eluded the best intelligence officers, military spy drones and orbiting satellites in a hideout believed to be in the northern part of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But now, a far more mundane technology - mobile phone service - is rolling out across Pakistan and the surrounding region. Some experts say it could, in the end, make it increasingly difficult for bin Laden to evade capture. In the years since bin Laden was last seen leaving the battle of Tora Bora, six operators in Pakistan have moved in and blanketed roughly half of the country with digital wireless phone networks. “People all around Pakistan now have handsets,” Zouhair Khaliq, chief executive of Mobilink, Pakistan’s largest mobile operator, said in an interview at the Mobile World Congress, an industry convention. “It is getting increasingly difficult for anyone to hide in Pakistan, even bin Laden.” But with 65 million people using mobile phones each day in Pakistan, the country is much more wired together than it was when bin Laden disappeared, which may be bad news for terrorists in general. When the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked in September 2001, Pakistan had only a rudimentary fixed-line phone network operated by the government. Today, five privately owned wireless operators owned by investors from Egypt, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Pakistan have crisscrossed the country with cell base stations. The operators, Khaliq said, spent a combined $8 billion in 2007 to expand their networks, which now reach 70 percent of the country’s 160 million people. Some operators, like Mobilink, which has a 47 percent share, and Telenor Pakistan, a unit of the Norwegian wireless operator with 15 million customers, have even started to build base stations in the remote northwest of the country, where U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden may be holed up. Pakistan’s wireless networks are basic GSM networks, the slower predecessor of the high-speed networks common in the urban West, which can now be used as global positioning satellite devices.

Link: Jordan: Zain wins tender to provide government services through SMS

Zain, part of the Zain Group, the leading mobile telecommunications provider in the Middle East and Africa, and the Next Generation Technologies Company (NGT) won a tender to facilitate the provision of government services through mobile phones, specifically through SMS. The tender was launched by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoICT). This initiative aims to provide Jordanians living inside and outside Jordan with a range of government services, thus streamlining all procedures for Jordanians. During the first phase of this project, Jordanians will be able to benefit from services of the main government institutions only. For its part, Zain will contribute to achieving the main goal of the e-government program, which is promoting and facilitating the communication process between Jordanians and government institutions and departments through alternative communication channels, mainly the SMS, taking into consideration the increase usage of mobile phones among Jordanians with a total of 85% of Jordanians presently use mobiles phones, and this number is still increasing. NGT, a local company engaged in providing mobile data services, and specializing in SMS services, will use Zain’s network exclusively, to send information by SMS from government institutions and departments to Jordanians who live in and out of Jordan. This service is known as Push SMS. Meanwhile, Zain will also provide Pull SMS service, which will allow customers to send enquiries about services through SMS. Customers will then receive their answers from the government institution or department in question through SMS. To subscribe to the Pull SMS service, send an empty SMS to 94444. Subscribers will promptly receive a choice of the services provided from which customers can chose the service needed form the institution in question. Through the service, subscribers can enquire about vehicle licensing and ticketing, vehicle customs, water invoices, company tax balances, land sales in the Department of Lands and Surveys, weather conditions, competitive ranking in the Civil Service Bureau, as well as other services.