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Mobile 2.0
Applications and
Conditions
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PTA, in collaboration with LIRNEasia, hosted the Expert
Forum Meeting on “Mobile 2.0 Applications and
Conditions” on 26th and 27th of April. A multitude of
themes were discussed over the four sessions, where the
experts presented their research and cases to an
audience that comprised representatives, regulators,
mobile operators, government agencies and the media
from nine countries of the Asia Pacific region. At the end
followed a comprehensive discussion session which was
very open, interactive, educative and interesting
Mobile 2.0 describes the next wave of applications and
services – the use of mobiles for more than voice. The
Forum concluded that the policy makers and service and
application providers of South Asian countries should
focus on strategies for the improvement of broadband
penetration in the region. There must be multiple
approaches to deal with the issues faced by the
Information Communication Technologies (ICT) Industry
so that the use of mobile phone “beyond voice” could be
encouraged.
The two-day Expert Forum Meeting arranged by Pakistan
Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in collaboration with
LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka continued on 27th April 2010
comprising four sessions followed by panel discussion
among the key participants of the event. Researchers and
regulatory agencies representatives from Sri Lanka,
Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, India, Philippines,
Bhutan and other countries gave presentations on
different topics based on the theme “Beyond Voice”.
During the sessions, speakers and presenters explored
the different aspects of the theme and shared their own
experiences and presented various case studies. The
topics included Easing Payments, Making Markets
Efficient, mGovernment, mCommerce, m-social
networking, Conditions for Mobile 2.0, Market Entry,
success story of Mobile Number Portability (MNP)in
Pakistan and Quality of Service (QoS) experiences. At the
end of the sessions, a panel discussion moderated by
Chairman PTA was conducted to review the proceedings
and findings of the forum. The participants of the forum
appreciated PTA applications and suggested that these
should be introduced by other countries as well.
It may be mentioned that Mobile 2.0 describes the next
wave of mobile usage - use of mobiles for ‘more-than-
voice’. Mobiles are increasingly becoming payment
devices which can also send or receive voice, text and
images. Use and awareness of Mobile 2.0 applications
among ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ (BoP) users is still poor. In
2008, only 10% of the Pakistan BoP knew about the
financial services available through mobile platform.
Awareness ratings of mGovernment and mHealth services
were lower. Actual usage of any of these services was by
less than 1%. Still as their economic constraints lessen, it
is likely that people at the BoP will gradually increase their
communication-related spending. Instead of paying for fat
pipes to connect their homes to a host of entertainment
and data services (quadruple play) most of them will
invest in new terminal devices and applications that would
improve their communicative interactions in the Mobile 2.0
framework, spending incrementally the amounts for the
communication services they currently consume.
Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen, in his welcoming
note for the Opening Session, said that “Mobile 2.0
Conditions and Applications” is an appealing subject
especially in the case of Pakistan where local mobile
sector has been revolutionized in less than half a decade.
With less than a million subscribers in 2004, today we are
standing at 97 million and would be hitting 100 million
subscribers in another 3 to 4 months. Dr. Yaseen said
that “beyond voice” is an area on which countries are
working globally in order to increase their revenues. While
Pakistan’s mobile voice market has become quite mature,
we are also looking towards beyond voice zones now. “We
would like to utilize the work of the participants while
devising our own strategies for improving data services
and beyond” the Chairman PTA added.
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