Instaphone

Last updated
InstaPhone
Private
Industry Telecommunication
Genre Subsidiary
FateLicense canceled
Founded1991 [1]
DefunctJanuary 4, 2008 (License cancelled)
Headquarters
Islamabad
,
Pakistan
Key people
Iain Williams, CEO
ProductsInstaXcite, InstaPhone Postpaid
Parent Millicom International Cellular (former), Afreen Group (present)
Website https://www.instaphone.com

Instaphone was Pakistan's first mobile communication service. It was launched by M/s Pakcom Ltd., a telecommunications company and the industry pioneer in the country. The company was jointly owned by M/s Arfeen and Millicom International (Luxembourg) and was acquired later by the Arfeen Group.

Pakistan federal parliamentary constitutional republic in South Asia

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212,742,631 people. In area, it is the 33rd-largest country, spanning 881,913 square kilometres. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China in the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.

Telephone company organization that provides telephone and/or other telecommunications service

A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP) that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many telephone companies were at one time government agencies or privately owned but state-regulated monopolies. The government agencies are often referred to, primarily in Europe, as PTTs.

Contents

History

In 1989, the Government of Pakistan awarded licences to mobile operators. M/s Pakcom Ltd. and M/s Paktel Ltd. won the bids and were granted 15-year licences. A third company (M/s Pakistan Mobile Telecommunication ltd) was among the competitors, but did not meet the bid requirements.

Government of Pakistan National government

The Government of Pakistan is a federal government established by the Constitution of Pakistan as a constituted governing authority of the four provinces of a proclaimed and established by the parliamentary democratic republic, constitutionally called the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The two companies raced to launch their cellular service and "Instaphone" won the race by few weeks, when they launched their service on 16 October 1990 with 3 Radio Base Stations. The following month services were offered in Islamabad. The cellular mobile exchange of both operators used Ericsson model AXE-10. Services at Peshawar were started in April 1991 as a satellite of the Islamabad exchange, linked via PTCL network. Quetta service began as a satellite of the Karachi exchange (linked via PTCL).

Ericsson Swedish provider of communications technology and services

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, doing business as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company offers services, software and infrastructure in information and communications technology for telecommunications operators, traditional telecommunications and Internet Protocol (IP) networking equipment, mobile and fixed broadband, operations and business support services, cable television, IPTV, video systems, and an extensive services operation.

AXE telephone exchange

The AXE telephone exchange is a product line of circuit switched digital telephone exchanges manufactured by Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by Ellemtel, a research and development subsidiary of Ericsson and Televerket. The first system was deployed in 1976. AXE is not an acronym, but an Ericsson product code.

Billing was post-paid with Rs.5000/- as an initial deposit. Call data was stored on magnetic tapes that were sent to UK for printing of bills and the bills were then sent to customers, a 45+-day process. This delay led many to default after running up large bills. The call rate was Rs.4/- per minute for local calls charged to both (caller and responder). Such unpaid billing was Rs. 25 Million approx in June 1993.

The company's license was cancelled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority in January 2008 for unpaid license renewal fees totalling $291 million. [2] Instaphone appealed the decision and filed a petition challenging the national Mobile Cellular Policy of 2004. [3] Both actions were dismissed by the Islamabad High Court on April 14, 2009. The court extended the deadline for payment of the outstanding license fees to 6 May 2009. [4]

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, abbreviated as PTA, is a state owned enterprise responsible for the establishment, operation and maintenance of telecommunications in Pakistan. Headquartered in Islamabad, PTA also has regional offices located in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Muzaffarabad and Rawalpindi.

Islamabad High Court, located in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, was established under Islamabad High Court Act, 2010 after the 18th amendment in the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973. Earlier, the Islamabad High Court was established by the President Pervez Musharraf by a Presidential Order of 14 August 2007, which was ceased to exist in pursuant to the Supreme Court Order dated 31 July 2009 passed in Constitution Petition No. 09 and 08 of 2009. President Asif Ali Zardari administered oath to the first chief Justice of Islamabad High Court Justice Iqbal Hameed ur Rahman on 3 January 2011 at Governor House Karachi.

Instaphone eventually declared bankruptcy.

Market share

Before the company's license was canceled, It was ranked at the bottom in terms of market share.

Revenue, millions PKR. [5]
2003-042004-052005-062006-07
3,1962,6931,539472

Technology migration strategy

Instaphone had a unique migration strategy between analog service in the 1980s to the digital GSM network. Due to a lack of telephone number porting laws in Pakistan, Instaphone kept a large TDMA network from the 1990s up until the middle of the 2000s. Due to this rare TDMA presence, Pakistan was flooded with unlocked American and Canadian TDMA cellphones for Instaphone customers who were mostly business users at the time and needed to keep their established telephone numbers.

An analog signal is any continuous signal for which the time-varying feature (variable) of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous voltage of the signal varies continuously with the pressure of the sound waves. It differs from a digital signal, in which the continuous quantity is a representation of a sequence of discrete values which can only take on one of a finite number of values. The term analog signal usually refers to electrical signals; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, human speech, and other systems may also convey or be considered analog signals.

GSM standard to describe protocols for second generation digital cellular networks used by mobile phones

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. It was first deployed in Finland in December 1991.By the mid-2010s, it became a global standard for mobile communications achieving over 90% market share, and operating in over 193 countries and territories.

Local number portability (LNP) for fixed lines, and full mobile number portability (FMNP) for mobile phone lines, refers to the ability of a "customer of record" of an existing fixed-line or mobile telephone number assigned by a local exchange carrier (LEC) to reassign the number to another carrier, move it to another location, or change the type of service. In most cases, there are limitations to transferability with regards to geography, service area coverage, and technology. Location Portability and Service Portability are not consistently defined or deployed in the telecommunication industry.

TDMA grey market phones

Many North American standard TDMA phones showed up in Dubai en route to Pakistan, usually bonded by third parties who kept satellite offices there. The majority of these North American phones were sold on the grey market allegedly laundering money for the Indian mafia. Hundreds of Pakistani immigrants across North America tried to take part in this opportunity and many lost their life savings over fraudulent letters of credit. The average shipment was approximately $30,000 USD of cellphones.

Dubai Metropolis in United Arab Emirates

Dubai is the largest and most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf, it is the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the country.

A grey or gray market refers to the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market products are products traded outside authorized manufacturer channel.

Money laundering Process of transforming profits of crime and corruption into ostensibly legitimate assets

Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.

See also

Related Research Articles

Advanced Mobile Phone System

Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, Israel in 1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February 18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in Pakistan by October 2004,, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.

India's telecommunication network is the second largest in the world by number of telephone users with 1.183 billion subscribers as on 31 May 2019. It has one of the lowest call tariffs in the world enabled by mega telecom operators and hyper-competition among them. As on 31 July 2018, India has the world's second-largest Internet user-base with 460.24 million broadband internet subscribers in the country. As of 31 December 2018, India had a population of 130 crore people, 123 crore Aadhaar digital biometric identity cards, 121 crore mobile phones, 44.6 crore smartphones, 56 crore internet users up from 481 million people in December 2017, and 51 per cent growth in e-commerce.

Nepal's telecommunication network has increased over the years significantly, with the number of telephone users reaching 40,789,198 subscribers as on 14 May 2019.

Telecommunications in Pakistan describes the overall environment for the growing mobile telecommunications, telephone, and Internet markets in Pakistan.

The liberalisation of Bangladesh's telecommunications sector began with small steps in 1989 with the issuance of a licence to a private operator for the provision of inter alia cellular mobile services to compete with Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), the previous monopoly provider of telecommunications services within Bangladesh. Significant changes in the number of fixed and mobile services deployed in Bangladesh occurred in the late 1990s and the number of services in operation have subsequently grown exponentially in the past five years.

Etisalat

Emirates Telecommunication Group Company PJSC,, branded trade name Etisalat, is a multinational Emirati based telecommunications services provider, currently operating in 15 countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. As of February 2014, Etisalat is the 14th largest mobile network operator in the world, with a total customer base of more than 167 million. Etisalat was named the most powerful company in the United Arab Emirates by Forbes Middle East in 2012.

Mercury Communications

Mercury Communications was a national telephone company in the United Kingdom, formed in 1981 as a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless, to challenge the then-monopoly of British Telecom (BT). Mercury was the first competitor to BT, and although it proved only moderately successful at challenging their dominance, it was to set the path for new communication companies to attempt the same.

Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian wireless telephone company headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is Canada’s largest wireless carrier, with 10.8 million subscribers as of Q4 2018, and revenues of just under $15.1 billion in 2018. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications.

Ufone Pakistani telecommunication company

Pak Telecom Mobile Limited or Ufone is a Pakistani GSM cellular service provider. It was the third mobile operator to enter Pakistani market. It started its operations under the brand name of Ufone, in Islamabad on January 29, 2001.

Paktel

Paktel was the pioneer cellular operator of Pakistan. It was the first ever company granted license to carry out cellular phone services in Pakistan, set up by Cable & Wireless. It carried out AMPS services until 2004 when the company switched to GSM technology.

Mobilink Pakistani telecommunications company

Mobilink was a trade name of Pakistan Mobile Communications Limited (PMCL), a mobile operator in Pakistan providing a range of prepaid and postpaid voice and data telecommunication services to both individual and corporate subscribers. Its head office is in Islamabad, and the current President and CEO is Jamsheed Shahzad. The network claims to have been the first GSM-based mobile operator in South Asia.

Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan, branded as Telenor 4G, is a Pakistani mobile data and digital services provider, owned by Norwegian company Telenor Group.

Ptcl Pakistani telecommunication company

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, commonly known as PTCL, is the national telecommunication company in Pakistan. PTCL provides telephone and internet services nationwide and is the backbone for the country's telecommunication infrastructure despite the arrival of a dozen other telecommunication corporations, including Telenor GSM and China Mobile. The corporation manages and operates around 2000 telephone exchanges across the country, providing the largest fixed-line network. Data and backbone services such as GSM, HSPA+, CDMA, LTE, broadband internet, IPTV, and wholesale are an increasing part of its business. Originally a state-owned corporation, the share holding of Ptcl was reduced to 62%, when 26% of shares and control were sold to Etisalat Telecommunications while the remaining 12% to the general public in 2006 under an intensified privatization program under Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. However, the 62% of shares still remain under the management of government-ownership of state-owned corporations of Pakistan.

Partner Communications Company Israeli telecommunications company

Partner Communications Company Ltd. doing business as Partner, formerly known as Orange Israel, is a mobile network operator, internet Wi-Fi, fixed telephony service and OTT/IPTV provider in Israel. It was formerly operating under the Orange brand name until 16 February 2016.

The Internet in Pakistan has been available since the early 1990s. Information and communications technology (ICT) is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. In 2001 just 1.3% of the population used the Internet. By 2006 this figure had grown to 6.5% and in 2012 to 10.0%. As of April 2019; the percentage of broadband internet users in Pakistan is 33.14%, which translates into approximately 70 million citizens having access to broadband internet.

National Telecommunication Corporation (Pakistan)

The National Telecommunication Corporation is a government owned information technology and Telecommunication services provider corporation in Pakistan

CMPak Limited, branded as Zong 4G, is a Pakistani mobile data network operator owned by Chinese government-owned company China Mobile. It is based in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and a net contributor to the Pakistani economy. Whilst having only 0.8% of the country's population, it contributes 1% to the country's GDP. The Islamabad Stock Exchange, founded in 1989, is Pakistan's third largest stock exchange after Karachi Stock Exchange and Lahore Stock Exchange. The exchange has 118 members with 104 corporate bodies and 18 individual members. The average daily turnover of the stock exchange is over 1 million shares. As of 2012, Islamabad LTU was responsible for Rs 371 billion in tax revenue, which amounts to 20% of all the revenue collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) as of 2012.

3G mobile telephony was relatively slow to be adopted 3Gglobally. In some instances, 3G networks do not use the same radio frequencies as 2G so mobile operators must build entirely new networks and license entirely new frequencies, especially so to achieve high data transmission rates. Other delays were due to the expenses of upgrading transmission hardware, especially for UMTS, whose deployment required the replacement of most broadcast towers. Due to these issues and difficulties with deployment, many carriers were not able to or delayed acquisition of these updated capabilities.

References

  1. Instaphone - About us
  2. "PTA Cancels Instaphone License". Green & White. January 5, 2008. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  3. Instaphone Appeal dismissed by Islamabad Highcourt. Propakistani.pk. Retrieved 15 April 2009.
  4. "Cellular co's appeal dismissed". The Nation. Retrieved April 15, 2009.
  5. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority