PTCL Celebrates 1 Million Broadband Customers: ProPakistani

PTCL Celebrates 1 Million Broadband Customers
Usman Ishaq Becomes Executive Director Commercial at Zong
Chairman PTA Gets Eidi from Public Money
Virtual Money – An Emerging Idea
Google Introduces Knowledge Graph for Best Possible Search Results

PTCL Celebrates 1 Million Broadband Customers

Posted: 17 May 2012 12:20 AM PDT

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) today announced that it has achieved one million broadband customers in the country, that is over or around 50 percent of broadband market share.

A messages by Mr. Walid Irshaid, President and CEO PTCL, published on its official website says:

With over 3 million fixed line users and 1 million Broadband customers in over 1000 cities, PTCL is reaching the country's furthest areas where others have not.

We are fueling the Broadband revolution in Pakistan with our EVO 3G Wireless Broadband offering true mobility and fastest wireless Internet within the reach of every citizen of Pakistan.

PTCL claims that its DSL broadband services are offered in 1,000 cities countrywide while company's wireless broadband service namely EVO is stretched to over 180 cities and Nitro in 70 cities.

PTCL has been aggressively pushing its DSL and EVO/Nitro since it started offering DSL broadband services in 2007 and EVO in 2009.

With declining number of landline users, PTCL is now heavily relying on broadband customers for its revenues, which allow the company to attain better margins thanks to higher ARPU.

According to recently reported PTA stats, Pakistan had 1.9 million broadband customers till February 2012.

Usman Ishaq Becomes Executive Director Commercial at Zong

Posted: 16 May 2012 11:56 PM PDT

According to reliable sources at Zong, Usman Ishaq, Director Marketing, Zong has been promoted to Executive Director Commercial on the basis of his proven outstanding performance – especially during last 8 months – since he was appointed as Director Marketing.

Usman has played a key role in developing marketing strategy and providing direction for the sales, paving a way for Zong to become leading telecom operator in terms of new subscribers in recent past.

During his ongoing tenure at Zong, Usman has put his best earlier in Sales & Distribution Department with record new sales and then he achieved beyond expectations in Marketing department when he was made Director Marketing around 8 months ago.

His huge contribution in revenue generation and increased subscriber base has made CMPak one of the fastest growing Companies in Pakistan.

It merits mentioning here that this post of Executive Director Commercial has been introduced in Zong recently.

As Executive Director Commercial Usman has been assigned full responsibility to assist CCO in defining strategy for the entire department in order to achieve Company's objectives.

When contacted Zong's PR department for comments, they confirmed this new development.

Chairman PTA Gets Eidi from Public Money

Posted: 16 May 2012 09:21 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

In a disturbing news lately, it was revealed that Chairman PTA, Dr. Muhammad Yasin has been getting an Eidi bonus for himself valuing Rs. 350,000, that's equal to his one month basic salary.

Mr. Yasin admitted this during a Public Accounts Committee meeting this week. Chairman further revealed that this Eidi bonus was enjoyed by whole PTA staff including himself and two members of the board.

He told the committee that the Eidi bonus was paid in the shape of one-month basic salary and was given to all employees of the PTA.

It was revealed in the meeting that Chairman PTA gets Rs. 1 million per month as his monthly package that includes bonuses and benefits.

The Chairman PTA contended that salaries of PTA employees are neither high compared to the corporate sector nor the pay scales for professional management were revised since 2008. He said that there is a need of raise in our salaries. To this, the PAC chairman said that if he was dissatisfied with his package he should have resigned.

"The gross package of PTA chairman is Rs 1 million per month while I serve on a constitutional post and my total salary is Rs. 150,000," countered AGP Akhtar Buland Rana.

Via The News and Express Tribune

Virtual Money – An Emerging Idea

Posted: 16 May 2012 09:15 PM PDT

As the World Wide Web takes over more and more of our time the concept of money and wealth and how we spend it is also changing. The internet is drastically changing the way we interact with products and services.

Virtual Money is an emerging online "currency" which in the near future will become a vital component of any economy and will be a necessity for consumers to have.

By definition virtual money or in-game currency is "used to purchase virtual goods within a variety of online communities; which include social networking websites, virtual worlds and online gaming sites".

The concept of virtual money and virtual goods goes hand in hand and by definition virtual goods are "non-physical objects purchased for use in online communities or online purposes/games".

Virtual money or gamer money has been driving revenue in different parts of the world since 2005 and the interest in Virtual goods and Virtual Money has been increasing because different Social Media websites have integrated gaming platforms into themselves that trade in Virtual money.

According to reliable statistics in 2009-2010 games played on social networks brought in $ 1 billion in US only and over $ 7 billion worldwide in terms of sales of virtual goods. Analysts are predicting that by 2014 the revenue volume will swell to $ 14 billion worldwide.

Zynga the producers of Farmville, Castle Ville, Bubble Safari and Cityville in 2009 reported more than a $ 100 million in revenue directly from the purchase of virtual currency and goods.

Players of some multiplayer online games spend real money on virtual currency to purchase in game items like swords, horses and magic objects for their in game roles. In Restaurant City a game that was developed by Playfish 18 million active users have to manage their own café from A to Z, while Farmville which has 62 million users who own a farm and are responsible to cultivate it, furthermore they have to make in game purchases with game dollars so that they can make additions to their farm.

Virtual currency systems such as Hub Culture’s Ven (Name of the currency) enable users to trade and purchase items in the real world which is a step beyond gaming. This enables trade and purchase of real world items and commodities

Pakistani's will definitely board the virtual trade bandwagon sooner or later but developers needs to realize the magnitude of this idea and how a simple good idea can convert into lots of revenue for a lot of young, talented local techpreneurs.

Let's take a simple hypothetical scenario where a local software house or a group of local techpreneurs develop and online game which is then made available on one of the social networking websites like Facebook. People start using it, sign up for it and soon start spending more and more time one it. Then the inventors of the game start introducing virtual goods on the platform which requires real money so that online virtual money can be bought to play and trade virtual goods on the game.

This idea and business model can generate jobs and revenue for the people and the country. Pakistan is in dire need of initiative right now so that the economy can be jump started. In this cash strapped environment technology and related ideas can serve as a breakthrough.

To read more, click: Virtual Money – An Emerging Idea
ProPakistani.PK

Google Introduces Knowledge Graph for Best Possible Search Results

Posted: 16 May 2012 09:10 PM PDT

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Google is rolling out its new system for connecting the search able terms – they are calling them real life objects – to present better search results for the web users.

Google will store search terms (or objects) in its database to connect them with related terms (or objects) to co-relate them with each other.

This co-relation will be advised to users while they search for these terms (objects), in addition, these co-related terms can be served together if searched together.

Take this example of search term "Noble Prize", and another search term "Female". Google has a way of connecting both these objects, recognizing them separately but with ability to serve the results together if searched together. Hence, it will present the best results if searched for "Female Nobile Prize Winners".

Google Knowledge Graph will also try to help when a search term may refer to more than one thing, such as “Oil” (Coconut oil , crude oil, etc.) For search terms like this, Google will pick what it thinks is the best result, but will show alternative searches below the fact box.

With the Knowledge Graph, Google says it will be able to better understand search terms, hence it will summarize relevant content around that topic, including key facts user is likely to need for that particular thing. It will present a Wikipedia like summary about the term you have searched for.

No, its not exactly the Ask Jeeves, but probably a similar idea with enhanced features and results.

Have a look at following video to understand Google Knowledge base better:

world on your screen

Thursday, May 17, 2012