TechLahore

Pakistan blazed the WiMax trail and was the first major adopter of the technology, much before anyone in the neighbourhood, or even in the west. So far, WiMax is competing decently with various other mobile broadband options, such as EVO/EVDO. WiMax vendors in Pakistan have definitely had their challenges, but then that comes with the [...]

The last few years have seen a profusion of WiMAX services enter the Pakistani IT market. There are already three major vendors delivering these services, including Wateen, Mobilink and #3 player, Wi-Tribe. Wateen and Mobilink are obviously huge behemoths that can subsidize their WiMAX operations, if needed, by leveraging their booming cellular telephony businesses. They [...]

We don’t quite know yet who the telco is, but if it was THE largest (mobilink), they would have probably said so. That leaves Telenor, Ufone, Warid and Zong. Your guess is as good as mine. But more important than identifying the customer here is the fact that NetSol appears to be diversifying into the [...]

The communication infrastructure in Pakistan, both wired and wireless, is quite incredible. There’s one pet pieve I’d had for a while though, and that’s the lack of inexpensive, true mobile broadband in Lahore. WiMAX is available, but I haven’t come across a USB dongle from Wateen so far. Their rates are also a bit on [...]

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. True WiMAX competition in Pakistan, between Wateen’s existing service and Mobilink’s upcoming Infinity WiMAX offering. It’s only competition that will improve coverage, reduce rates and improve service. Currently, Wateen has the run of the house and to be honest, our December 2007 prediction is going to [...]

To follow-up on a story we reported on a few months ago, Huawei Technology from China has been chosen by Mobilink parent, Orascom, to deploy their WiMAX network in Pakistan. After Wateen/Warid’s WiMAX implementation, this will be the second largest. It’s interesting to note that Wateen chose a US-company, Motorola, for their implementation, while Mobilink [...]

We’ve been keeping you updated on all the various WiMAX deployments on their way in Pakistan. Other than the lacklustre marketing that plagued Wateen’s initial launch, so far has been so good. Today we got news from Australia that Buzz Broadband’s WiMAX network, the first to go live Down Under, has failed miserably and has [...]

More than a year after Pakistan announced the world’s largest WiMax network, India is following suit with a somewhat modest 200,000 user deployment. Tata group will be investing $500M over 3 years to build out a WiMax infrastructure primarily for commercial use. In Pakistan, the magnitude of WiMax adoption has been far more significant. Wateen [...]

Mobilink is currently deploying a very large, 8,500 km fiber optic network in Pakistan which will act as the backbone for its traffic by the end of 2008. An article that just appeared in The Daily Times details the project. Mobilink has already invested about $2.5BN in telecom infrastructure development in Pakistan and is poised [...]

The Business Recorder broke a story about an investigation that has been launched by the Competition Commission of Pakistan into Mobilink’s restrictive trade practices around their Blackberry offerings. The article highlights one specific area of inquiry, which is the inability for Blackberry handsets to access basic GPRS services without activating RIM data services. I think [...]