#10. No cell phones made in Pakistan.
#09. Not much of Urdu services or local content.
#08. Driving + talking on mobile = Accidents …. And no one is doing anything about it.
#07. People using their phone as a status symbol.
#06. No unlimited calling plans.
#05. Silly advertising which is completely out of touch with ground realities.
#04. PTA: Sleepy customer service + a lousy web site where finding information is a pain.
#03. Too many fancy schmancy services (e.g. mobile TV) but 3G and data services are still a rip off.
#02. Prime Minister firing off a statement every few days about rising mobile subscriber numbers, alluding that all problems of Pakistanis are now solved and demanding that Pakistan is where all the foreign. investment should flow to.
#01. Mobile phone snatching.
Babar Bhatti is a Telecom professional based in Dallas, Texas. See more at Babar’s blog: State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan.
What about these:
10) Changing cell phone without need
9) Buying cell phone for the features that one does not need
8) People having cell phone only to give miss call
7) Taking mobile phones to funerals
6) Not keeping cell phones off even during important meetings
5) Renting mobile phones (Yes it is true and as low as 20 rupees a day)
4) Keeping more than five sims of various companies
3) Keeping more than one mobile phones simeltaneously
2) Having different cell phones for travelling and other for social gathering to show off
1) Having a competition of ring tones
Aqil Sajjad and peacenik: Thanks for taking my bait. We the “educated-upper-middle-classâ€
“How to convince the “educated-upper-middle-classâ€
Nice point Aqil,
FDIs for the sake of FDIs mean nothing. Flow of invester money for brown-field investments (like acquisition of banks) and investment in non-production mass consumption ventures (like telecom) can give an illusion of growth and prosperity, but these investments can potentially become a pain in the neck once the investers begin repatriating profits. Keep checking the figures of capital outflows and you will see how our consumption-led growth hype retards our long-term future growth.
Talking of mobiles, the CIA World factbook article on Pakistan:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world -factbook/print/pk.html
gives the figure of 48,289,136 (2006) mobiles. I wonder if this figure isn’t a bit of exaggeration…
Every third Pakistani holding a mobile set… find hard to swallow… especially given that two-thirds of our population lives under $2 a day.
Dear PMA ref post 5:
“What makes our people to come into the streets en-mass and wage gun battles against each other like they have done it last week in Karachi?”
As mentioned by Adnan Ahmed (post 7), in this case organized groups were involved. But if you are looking for an underlying cause for this culture of violance, then it’s probably the long history of authoritarian rule and the absence of a democratic culture. This leaves violance as the only way to push one’s views/agenda.
“How to convince the “educated-upper-middle-classâ€