Mobilink is Nearing Mobile Banking Solution

These days Mobile Commerce is probably the hottest trend in Pakistan’s telecom market. We know that Mobilink had sensed the potential in mobile banking/branch less banking, pretty early, however company took its time in executing the idea.

News it that Mobilink is set ready to launch Mobile Commerce, under which it would introduce the concept of Branchless Banking with local and international remittance. Launch is expected early next year.

In a recent report published in Business Recorder, while quoting Mobilink Spokesperson, said that Mobilink is going to enable the consumers to have the experience of paying utility bills, opening and usage of bank accounts through cell phones, and national and international remittances.

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Samsung Corby Excites Students

Samsung Electronics Company Limited through a promotional partnership with the Beacon House School Systems, has introduced the latest Samsung Corby Series mobile phones through student engagements at Beacon House schools located in various cities of Pakistan. The students are provided with fun activities and opportunities to win this futuristic cellular product through lucky draws.

The youth oriented Corby series is focused on interactivity and loaded with exciting features such as videos, images, sounds, music and data sharing. The joint-promotion aims to generate excitement among the youth and provide them a feel of the touch phones to make them understand the multiple capabilities of the Corby. These mobile phones are specially designed to enhance the ability of young people to make new friends.

Zeshan Qureshi, Head of Samsung Mobiles, Pakistan and Afghanistan said, “It is delightful to host 8000 students in these activities that comprise of friendship competitions, Fastest SMS contests, Graffiti skill games and Poster painting challenges. Samsung would like to share the joy of the winners of Corby phones in these Lucky draws”.

Zeeshan further added that; As an International chain of educational-excellence, Beacon House is a well-suited partner for Corby-promotions, as its 150 campuses in Pakistan alone have over 100,000 students, allowing Samsung to effectively reach out to the Youth segment”. Games, Contests, display-kiosks, promoters, Mobiles and Dummies are the exciting components of these Corby activities held for over 10 days at various campuses.

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Absolutely Free Unlimited Calls to USA and Canada

The word FREE fascinates every one, and when it is tagged with calls to America and Canada, making the line “Free Calls to USA and Canada”, i am sure it is going to catch many eyes.

http://callingamerica.com offers web-based (meaning that you don’t need to download dialer) free unlimited calls to USA and Canada. This ad supported model allows callers from around the world to call absolutely free to USA and Canada for unlimited time.

You can make 2 min long calls without singing up, and 15 mins long calls after you sign up with a free account. Though you can re-dial after 15 minutes to reconnect the call – this 15 min disconnection is to avoid fraudulent and SPAM calls.

Also note that one ad will be played for receiving party before the call actually connects. Afterward, call will remain un-interrupted and ad-free.

I am not sure how long this service will last, but for time being, it is a fun service. We have seen similar ad supported VoIP models before, but many of such services demise soon.

And yes, you need broadband for smooth conversation; though voice quality is not crystal clear.

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How to Setup Call Center for Businesses

For those who are not familiar with term inbound call center, it is supposed to be an arrangement for a business to receive calls from customers/potential customers for variable matters, for instance, support, after sale support or pre-sale queries. Similarly outbound call Center means an arrangement where agents can make call out of your system to pitch for sales.

Now let’s discuss on scenarios and options if you have any such demand.

Call Center is usually taken as a night shift work environment, where hundreds of agents are sitting in a hall and making or receiving calls in a non-stop manner. But not really is the case, a company can have a 2 agent inbound call center for providing support to customers, or it can have a 3 agent outbound call center for pitching sales and so on.

During this hard economic time not every business can afford IP telephony system, or those sophisticated call center solutions that costs hundreds of thousands dollars. So in this series we will start with call center solution for three kinds of businesses

• Small Businesses
• Mid Sized Businesses
• Large Sized Businesses

Call Center for Small Businesses

Before setting up a call center and asking for quotes from various companies for the setup, you need to closely analyze your needs. You should clearly know the amount of agents, if they will be making outbound calls or getting inbound calls and so on.

In this post, we will primarily focus on small businesses; however, in latter posts we will discuss Mid Sized and large scale businesses.

Let’s consider this case study, a small sized software house that has 10 customers in USA, 3 in Egypt and 1 in Middle East. Customers do need the support on regular basis – thus they require a phone number to contact you.

As it is obvious there is a need of inbound call center, with maybe not more than 1 agent or 2 at most. In this case, you don’t need to do anything; just one or otherwise two Skype accounts will do the wonders for you.

You are supposed to have a business skype account, yes that’s different from ordinary account – with a business Skype account you get a Business Control Panel, where you can add as many skype accounts as you want.

So ask your agents to make their Skype accounts (regular way), and you can make their Skype IDs yourself.

Now you may need to add those Skype IDs in your Business account through Business Control Panel. Once done, you can allot those agent IDs with credit, Skype In numbers, you can have an eye on their activity, logs and much more.

I used a term called Skype In also called as Online Numbers – is going to be a virtual number of USA or any other country you select from, and all calls made on this number will land on your Skype Phone.

You can have online of various countries, including Australia, Malta, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Romania, France, South Africa, Germany, Korea, South, Hong Kong S.A.R., China, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, Ireland, United Kingdom, Italy, United States and Japan.

So get an online number of a country where your customers reside, so that they get a local number to dial you. You can have multiple online numbers mapped with an agent, meaning that he/she can receive calls from multiple online numbers.

One online number for USA costs not more than 10$ for three months, so that’s not expensive.

That’s it – you are done, give out this number to your customers and update it on your website, and you got a working call center.

In case you need an outbound call center, you can add unlimited calling plan to your agents – with this monthly plan your agents can make unlimited calls at a fixed monthly rental…!

You can tweak around with your account to get the best out of your budget. Here you see you can setup a fully working call center, with keeping track of calls, you can even setup voice recording of your Skype Calls, call forwarding and other similar useful things with this solution – and all this comes with 6$ per agent per month for outbound calls and 10$ per agent per 3 months for inbound calls.

Give us your feedback, and wait for call center solution for small sized and large sized businesses in coming days…!

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White House Targets Mobile Users in Pakistan, Afghanistan

The White House said that it dubbed video clips of US President Barack Obama’s speech this week on Afghanistan into Arabic, Dari, Pashtu and Urdu for distribution on mobile devices. The White House, in a blog post, said Internet penetration in Afghanistan and Pakistan is relatively low, just two percent and 11 percent respectively, so it has intentions to reach masses through Mobile Phones.

White House blog said that the number of people in those countries with mobile devices is much higher – 52 percent of the 177 million people in Pakistan and 30 percent of the 28.4 million in Afghanistan. “Given this trend, we produced short video clips of the President’s segment to Afghans and had it dubbed in Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, and Urdu in order for them to be distributed locally on mobile devices,” the White House said.


“We’re hopeful that leveraging technology this way will help us achieve the president’s goal of increasing America’s security and undercutting the appeal of al Qaeda and other extremists through global engagement,” it said.

Earlier this year, the White House posted a video on its website featuring a simultaneous translation into Farsi of comments Obama made on Iran and a Farsi transcript of the remarks. Obama directed some of Tuesday’s speech to the Afghan people saying “America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering” and has “no interest in occupying your country.”

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Nokia Releases 6700 Slide and Nokia 7230

Nokia has unveiled two new 3G slider phones, the Nokia 6700 slide and Nokia 7230, made for the design-conscious consumer and optimized for socializing and sharing with those closest to you.


Available in various fresh colors, with great imaging features and quick access to popular social networking communities, the Nokia 6700 slide and Nokia 7230 make a real style statement.

The Nokia 6700 let’s you capture and share quickly and easily. With a choice of six fresh and vivid colors – pink, red, petrol blue, aluminum, lime and purple – this slimline slider is sure to turn heads. Its compact size, modern design and aluminum finish feels great in the hand, and fits perfectly even in the smallest pocket or bag.

The smart capabilities of the Nokia 6700 slide are beautifully easy to use: The 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics is perfect for capturing and sharing moments as they happen. Favorite images can be edited on the go and uploaded to the web directly from the camera menu. The device’s high speed 3G connectivity ensures your favorite communities are always as close as your Nokia 6700 slide.

The Nokia 7230 let’s you share in style. Being connected was never so good. Its compact slide design, colorful looks and solid set of features are a package that offers great value for money.

Sharing special moments and joy with friends and family is effortless, thanks to the 3.2 megapixel camera, large 2.4″ display and fast 3G connectivity. With the Nokia 7230 in your pocket, you also have quick access to email, instant messaging and social networks on the go, and the subtle illumination indicates if you have missed calls or messages from your friends.

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Intel Works with Pre-STEP to Promote Technology for Faculty Members

Intel Pakistan recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a consortium partner in Pre-STEP (the Pre-service Teacher Education Program). The agreement has been made to launch a technology program in Government colleges of Pakistan with a vision to improve the basic education by strengthening teacher training institutes.

Pre-STEP is a five-year, national program led by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The program is designed to improve the quality of basic education in Pakistan by improving teacher preparation practices and strengthening the capacity of up to 75 teacher training institutes and 15 universities. This program will also provide an opportunity for teacher educators to learn about, practice and make plans to use active teaching approaches.

Under this agreement, Intel Pakistan and Pre-STEP will develop and pilot a technology course, with the objective that trainee teachers receive hands on experience with technology aided teaching methodologies during their coursework at the college or university where they are enrolled.


“Intel aims to support trainee teachers to learn about key 21st century skills through the implementation of the Intel Teach Program,” said Ashar H. Zaidi, Country Manager, Intel Pakistan. “With the help of Pre-STEP & USAID, Intel aspires to help student teachers to gain first-hand experience with technology. This will not only breed creativity in a more productive learning environment, but also endorse their careers as teachers in the future.”

The Intel Teach program is designed to enable teachers to effectively use technology to enhance student learning in the digital world. It has evolved into a laudable venture that has achieved many milestones. Launched in the year 2002, the program has won much acclaim in Pakistan as well as the international market.

Intel to date has trained 220,000 teachers in Pakistan, reaching out to over 60 cities and districts of Pakistan. Intel Education also conducts forums and workshops, and so far has reached out to over 28,000 teachers and principals, focusing on integrating technology and modern teaching methods in the teaching and learning process in Pakistan.

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Brain cancer trends not linked to cell phones

Here's one way to figure out whether cell phones are causing brain tumors: Look at the incidence of brain cancer over a 30-year span that covers the period from before cell phones came into general use until today, when they're ubiquitous.

The results, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, involving an analysis of 60,000 brain cancer victims from Scandinavian countries, are encouraging.

While cell phone use jumped dramatically from 1974 to 2003, the period which the study covers, overall brain cancer trends in the population didn't follow suit. For some areas, brain cancer rates were stable or trended down. For some, the modest increase in cancer incidence had already been underway before cell phones came into use, indicating other causes are likely at fault.

In any event, no radical jump in brain tumors was detected over the years analyzed, something you'd expect if cell phones were really causing a lot of medical problems.

Of course, this doesn't mean that cell phones don't contribute to or encourage brain tumor growth in some fashion, but it's likely that if they do, the effect is "small to moderate." It's also possible that cell phones impact the growth of tumors, but only over a very long exposure time, more than five or ten years -- or that cell phones encourage the growth of different kinds of tumors or only in certain types of users (such as children or the elderly).

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