Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Open Letter to Pakistan President Musharraf

By Anthony Mitchell, E-Commerce Times

If there was ever a time for a country to reposition itself, now is Pakistan's time. We begin here by outlining actions that can be taken to boost the economy and business confidence, then turn to what Pakistan might do to improve its image as a safe country in which to work and invest.

This has been a bad couple weeks for your country, Pakistan. Every day brings more bad news. The worst indication is the drop in confidence among broad segments of the business community in Pakistan earlier this month, particularly the tech sector, which has been growing at over 50 percent per year and represents one of your strongest bases of support.

Whereas the world as a whole has been transfixed by the London bombings, recent telecommunication problems that cut most of Pakistan off from the outside world for more than 11 days have caused widespread economic damage.

Although press coverage had previously revealed the fragility of Pakistan's telecommunications links, most businesses in Pakistan were caught unprepared. Additional maintenance outages that were set to begin yesterday on Pakistani Internet and voice traffic traversing through Europe were belatedly averted by last-minute rerouting.

Don't Go It Alone When Offshoring

By Anthony Mitchell, CEO, InternationalStaff.net

A response to Ann Bednarz's 'The Downside of Offshoring,' published by Network World on July 5, 2004.

'The Downside of Offshoring' has great pointers in it, such as going slowly and not overestimating potential savings of going offshore, particularly in a stand-alone mode.

The following comments are intended to help U.S. employers and employees gain a better understanding of offshoring, and how to benefit from it.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Bill Gates says he will visit Pakistan

By Sami Abrahim

SEATTLE: Bill Gates, the Chief Executive of Microsoft, has shown willingness to visit Pakistan when an invitation was extended by the world’s youngest MCP (Microsoft certified professional) Arfa Karim, 10, here on Tuesday.

The 10-year-old Pakistani, Arfa, is currently in the United States to visit the Microsoft Headquarters which is being sponsored by the cyber giant in recognition of her achievements in computer literacy at such a young age.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Branding Pakistan: The True Image of Pakistan

by Syed Asif Alam

An American journalist who recently visited Pakistan wrote in an incredulous tone about the progress Pakistan is making in technology field. The silent turnaround has put Pakistan as one of the fastest growing cellular industry along with rapidly growing and out performing Karachi Stock Exchange in the limelight of corporate managers worldwide.

The positive tone was seconded by a Harvard Business School analysis on 'Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) opportunities in Pakistan'. The report mentions 30 percent savings in costs as opposed to India along with infrastructure advantage of high speed connectivity in all the major cities at competitive rates.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Contact Centers : Asian Telecom Outage Leaves Widespread Call Center Damage -CRM News

By Anthony Mitchell
CRM Buyer


The cable outage caused widespread economic damage and disruption in Pakistan, with 3,000 staffers reportedly laid off among the roughly 30 call centers that did not have backup capacity. Nine call centers in Pakistan reportedly had backup satellite connections provided at no cost by the government.

Service has been restored on a damaged telecommunications cable that links India and Pakistan to the West, but not before the international service outage caused widespread financial damage, most especially to the cell center industry.

Service on the cable was restored on Friday. The cable was damaged on June 27, largely cutting Pakistan's telecommunications links with the outside world and disrupting India's connections. The problem also caused disruption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman and Djibouti.

The five countries affected were linked to the undersea cable network called Southeast Asia, Middle East and Western Europe-3, also known as SEA-ME-WE3 or SMW3.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Pakistan's SMW3 Internet Cable Link Restored

Daily DAWN Reporter

ISLAMABAD, July 8: The country’s internet system is back on track after two weeks of disruption as the fault in the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-3 (SEAMEWE-3) undersea cable near Karachi has been rectified by Dubai-based experts.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company President Junaid I. Khan said at a press conference at the company’s headquarters on Friday that the cable had been damaged by the anchor of a ship and the fault had been rectified.

He said the internet services were normalized at 11:54am. He said the experts had to face harsh weather caused by monsoon rains in the Arabian Sea.

He said a committee was being formed to seek ban on fishing in the sea over the cable to avert such a situation in future.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Contact Centers : India's Customer 'Lack of' Service

By Nandini Shah
The Times of India

Apparently, customers have found that product knowledge is not the forte of many of the executives. This, in spite of most customer care centers having a well-constructed training and feedback system. Is it a case of just better implementation then?

Bad customer service, lack of product knowledge and rude behavior of executives are major causes of distress for mobile phone Latest News about mobile phones owners.

Got a query about your mobile service? Would you call the toll free number to clarify it? Those who have had to listen to the 'you are on hold' music for too long will probably reply in the negative. Then, there are those who will complain about the lack of product knowledge and the rude behavior of some call center Latest News about call center executives who answer queries.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

SEA-ME-WE-3 fault: PTCL satellite backup satisfactory -Business Recorder Pakistan

WASHINGTON (July 03 2005)(APP): Noted Pakistani and Pakistani-American businessmen have said that they had been operating almost normally despite the reported damage caused in the SEA-ME-WE-3 fibre optic internet cable on Monday at the floor of the Arabian Sea, some 50km south of Karachi.

However, this has been a major blow to the IT industries both in Pakistan and India. Some better-funded Indian call centres had switched over to satellite backup systems, where available, but that not all centres had invested in such connections.

While in Pakistan, Pak Telecom Company Ltd (PTCL), Pakistan's major backbone provider scrambled to provide immediate satellite backup systems on priority to major Business Process Outsourcers and International Call Centres