PTCL Announces VSS Scheme to Offload Employees: ProPakistani

PTCL Announces VSS Scheme to Offload Employees
PTCL Surrenders 60 Million Numbers
Neelum Valley Gets Cellular Services
Government Bans Cell Phones in Official Govt Meetings
Microsoft Unveils Office 2013 [Download Links]

PTCL Announces VSS Scheme to Offload Employees

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 03:01 AM PDT

PTCL logo1 PTCL Announces VSS Scheme to Offload Employees PTCL has announced the offering of Voluntary Separation Scheme (VSS) for its employees who wish to quit jobs against hefty incentives.

Sources inside the company said that this upcoming VSS offer is aimed at downsizing of workforce with mutual benefits for both the employees and the company itself.

A notice issued by HR department of PTCL (pasted below – in Urdu) says that employees will have no pressure from the management to quit jobs by claiming VSS. It said the decision for claiming VSS will be purely from employees on their consent.

Notice said that those who wish not to claim VSS offering can continue working for PTCL with all their rights.

It maybe recalled that PTCL had offered VSS back in 2008, through which some 30,000 employees were offloaded who had claimed VSS then.

Incentives offered through VSS campaigns are still unclear. At the same time PTCL employees are waiting for court ruling concerning their pay scale, which could play a vital role in determining the final VSS incentives for employees.

We are in process of getting more details on this, meanwhile, have a look at PTCL's VSS offer notice below:

Letter via PTCL Workers

PTCL Surrenders 60 Million Numbers

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 03:00 AM PDT

PTA has cancelled 59.6 million numbers allocated to PTCL, which the landline giant had requested to surrender in two difference instances back in December 2010 and January 2011.

In two different letters issued to PTCL (produced below), Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said that all the numbers that were requested for cancellation have been canceled.

It is unclear so far if PTCL will have to pay the charges for allocated numbers that remained allotted to it for 18 months, even after the company had requested the authority to cancel them.

A PTCL spokesperson said that company will not pay the charges, and might go to court if numbering charges are imposed by PTA.

Before cancellation of these 60 million numbers, according to estimates, PTA had allotted around 80 million landline and wireless numbers to PTCL.

According to PTA, PTCL had 1.6 million wireless subscribers till March 2012 and another 2.9 million landline subscribers till December 2011.

Thanks Basit Alvi for tipping

To read more, click: PTCL Surrenders 60 Million Numbers
ProPakistani.PK

Neelum Valley Gets Cellular Services

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 02:50 AM PDT

Prime Minister Pakistan Raja Pervaiz Ashraf today inaugurated the Cellular Village Connection Trial (CVCT) project at Attmuqam, Neelum Valley AJ&K.

President and Prime Minister AJ&K, federal minister for information and federal minister AK&GB were also present on the occasion. Chairman PTA Dr.

Mohammed Yaseen and DG SCO General Khalid Rao informed the Prime Minister about the efforts made for development of telecommunication facilities at AJ&K in general and at Neelum Valley at particular.

The deregulation of the telecom sector brought about a revolutionary change which saw huge increase in subscriber base, teledensity and coverage area.

People of Neelum Valley were however devoid of these state of the art telecommunication facilities due to security concerns. In order to address the issue PTA initiated Cellular Village Connection Trial (CVCT) project at Attmuqam. The equipment was provided to SCO free of cost by Huawei through efforts of PTA. SCO successfully launched the project which is not only providing cellular services to the people but also catering for the needs of the defense organizations.

In order to extend the project up to Taobat, the last town of Neelum Valley, Universal Service Fund (USF) may be utilized. At present about 1.96 billion Rupees have been deposited by the telecom operators as USF for AJK which is more than sufficient to provide telecom coverage to all the important towns of the Neelum Valley.

The Prime Minister stressed upon need of telecommunication services for socio-economic development of the area. He appreciated the efforts made by PTA and ensured provision of necessary funds in order to expand telecommunication services to other parts of Neelum Valley.

To read more, click: Neelum Valley Gets Cellular Services
ProPakistani.PK

Government Bans Cell Phones in Official Govt Meetings

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 02:00 AM PDT

Federal government of Pakistan has banned the use of cell phones in all the official meetings. Government said that this step has been taken to prevent the leaking of important information.

The cabinet division of the National Telecom and Information Technology Security Board (NTISB) warned that the technology can be used for dubious purposes by the officials.

The board said that throughout this decade, the advancement of mobile technology has made data sharing easier than ever. It also said mobile phone technology can be used in both negative and positive ways.

It concluded by saying that most mobile phone devices today come with photo capturing and video recording capabilities which if used in a wrong way, can leak important and sensitive information to the outer world.

On a side note, various officials and National and Provincial Assembly members have been caught watching YouTube steaming and other (music) videos during their meetings and sessions. This ban, not announced though, but could be a reason to put a cap on such officials/MNAs/MPAs.

Microsoft Unveils Office 2013 [Download Links]

Posted: 17 Jul 2012 11:05 PM PDT

Microsoft has announced the availability of consumer preview version of its Office 2013, that the company is also calling Office 15.

Microsoft Office is claimed to be used by over a billion human beings and is said to be installed on over 90 percent of business PCs, and happens to be a major contributor towards Microsoft's revenues – estimated to bring in around USD 15 billion a year for the software giant.

This upgrade in Microsoft Office came shortly after the consumer preview release of Windows 8, giving an impression that Office 2013 is specifically optimized for touch screen devices.

Microsoft Office 2013 — final version of which will not be available for sale until next year — promises countless design and storage architecture enhancements (we will explain them below), however, you may not see many feature up gradation this new version.

Microsoft said that all documents saved in office 2013 will be stored on cloud, tied with your Microsoft ID. Office 2013 will come with various desktop apps for all possible devices to make sure that what ever work you save on a single device is stored on cloud and is ultimately synchronized with all the devices that you use. In simpler words, make habit of seeing your work saved on SkyDrive, for instance, instead of C drive.

Users in Pakistan can't sign-up or download this preview edition of Office 2013. Hard luck I would say, since you need to wait till Office 2013 is officially released for you, or probably you can search around to get the executable.

Update:

Thanks Waqas for tipping: Users in Pakistan can register for an account here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/office/apps and then download Office 2013 by going to download client tools.

Also to mention, Windows 7 or Windows 8 is required to run Office 2013.

Meanwhile, those from Pakistan and those who are on XP and Vista, check below introduction video for Office 2013:

Rest of you, go ahead and download the the consumer preview release from here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

world on your screen

Wednesday, July 18, 2012