Hi new visitor! At Green & White we discuss startups, business models, new media marketing, usability and more.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe for email alerts so that you keep up to date with the latest content. Now, on with the regular content...

The September edition of the MIT Technology Review has featured the work of Umar Saif, a professor at LUMS, on improving Internet connectivity in the developing-world. The Project, dubbed DonateBandwidth, is a follow-up project of Poor Man’s Broadband work which I wrote about previously. Our congratulations to Dr. Saif and the team.

Umar shared his thoguhts in an e-mail:

With DonateBandwidth, users in the developing-world can help each other by donating their unused bandwidth to those who need it. This project received funding from the US State Department/NAS and HEC and will be further developed in collaboration with UC Berkeley.

It is rare that research in Pakistan catches the attention of a publication like the Technology Review; I am told this is the first time MIT Technology Review has featured a research project in LUMS.

Here is an excerpt of the article “Spare Some Bandwidth?”

nternet access is growing steadily in developing nations, but limited infrastructure means that at times connections can still be painfully slow. A major bottleneck for these countries is the need to force a lot of traffic through international links, which typically have relatively low bandwidth.

Now computer scientists in Pakistan are building a system to boost download speeds in the developing world by letting people effectively share their bandwidth. Software chops up popular pages and media files, allowing users to grab them from each other, building a grassroots Internet cache.

In developed countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) create Web caches–machines that copy and store content locally–to boost their customers’ browsing speeds. When a user wants to view a popular website, the information can be pulled from the cache instead of from the computer hosting the website, which may be on the other side of the planet and busy with requests. Similar services are offered by content distribution companies such as Akamai, based in Cambridge, MA. High-traffic sites pay Akamai to host copies of their content in multiple locations, and users are automatically served up a copy of the site from the cache closest to them.

In countries like Pakistan, Internet connections are generally slow and expensive, and few ISPs offer effective caching services, limiting access to information–one reason why the United Nations has made improving Internet connectivity worldwide one of its Millennium Development Goals. None of Pakistan’s small ISPs cache much data, and traffic is often routed through key Internet infrastructure in other nations.

“In Pakistan, almost all the traffic leaves the country,” says Umar Saif, a computer scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). That’s the case even when a Pakistani user is browsing websites hosted in his or her own country. “The packets can get routed all the way through New York and then back to Pakistan,” Saif says.

So Saif’s team at LUMS is developing DonateBandwidth, a system inspired by the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol that is popular for trading large music, film, and program files. With BitTorrent, people’s computers swap small pieces of a file during download, reducing the strain placed on the original source.

Sometimes, a picture (or a collection of them) is worth more than a thousand words. So instead of boring you with text and bullet points, i’ll just show you!

Click on the image to go to the hosted presentation on slideshare, the best place in the world to share slides. I would’ve embedded it here, but we’re having some technical difficulties in that.

This presentation is featured as “Slideshow of the Day” on slideshare.net, the highest honor on that site. Also, I’ve included it in the World’s Best Presentation Contest under the Business category, so if you like it, don’t forget to vote up for it!

Warid has recently announced 2 location based services: friend finder and place finder (i.e. local search). These are pay-per-use services (Rs.3+tax). Using SMS or MMS. you can find the location of another warid cell phone customer or do a local search for a point of interest such as bank. Service is limited to major cities.

This is an interesting first step towards location based services (LBS) for the telecom industry. In US and EU, navigation and related data services are growing rapidly and account for a major portion of network operator’s revenue. The rules and privacy norms are quite different in developed countries and sharing of real-time location is subject to a lot of scrutiny. Warid is simply relying on per-request permission to work around the privacy concern. However I do not find this a good approach — it can be quite annoying to get such messages left and right.

In the US, LBS is a hot area with lots of startup acitivty. Companies such as brightkite, loopt and whrrl have received tons of VC money to develop all kinds of fancy mobile and web-based applications. Recent inclusion of GPS in 3G iPhone has created even more buzz!

Warid has taken a different and relatively simple approach where the application is based on back and forth sms or multimedia message (MMS). The SMS solution is pretty much the same which Google offers in the US and which works extremely well for quick searches. The MMS option is for the map display - limited to a few major cities. Since there is no mention of GPS requirement, Warid must be using triangulation algorithms to find the approximate location. See my previous post on Google maps and how it works.

Although there are many limitations of Warid’s LBS this still matters because this is the first attempt for location based service. I can assure you that this is just the start and we will soon plenty of other implementations around the buddy finder concept and LBS in general. There are so many creative ways to use this service, especially when combined with a personalized website and higher resolution maps.

The PTCL ITI Connectivity with SMW-4 went down early Monday because of a cable cut in Segment 2.2. International traffic is currently running on a backup via SMW-3, and because of the excess load there, net access speed has started crawling (we’re getting sub 200kbps instead of the regular T1).

Other ISPs who also used PTCL backhaul - such as Nayatel in Islamabad - are also affected.

If someone knows more about progress here, please share in the comments.

An email has been circulating on some technical groups which requests input from all stakeholders about Pakistan’s upcoming IT policy. The attachment with the mail has the text as shown below. This is quite a way to gather input. Many have expressed their concerns about the process and the lack of clear context and missing information about the process. I found the questions to be very open-ended and it is unclear how the input will be filtered and used. Perhaps the policy makers should read some of the blogs to get an idea of what they need to support these tech savvy folks. Anyway, this is one way to provide your say - who knows someone may even read it.

Government of Pakistan has initiated a broad based consultative process to formulate National IT Policy for the next five years. In order to make a realistic and practical policy the Government intends to involve all the stakeholders in this consultative process. Kindly send your comments to asaeed at moitt.gov.pk latest by 31st of July 2008. You can post your comments as well on virtual group at http://www.nidu. gov.pk/forum

You are kindly requested to give your inputs which may not be restricted only to the following questions:

• What opportunities are available in national and international markets which can be availed by having right policies in place for the promotion of IT Sector of Pakistan?
• What steps are required and what quantifiable targets can be set in the policy for IT sector to:

• Increase IT Exports
• Stimulate Local industry
• Support local entrepreneurship
• Develop Human Resource
• Improve IT infrastructure
• Integrate IT education
• Enhance e-services
• Promote e-commerce
• Explore innovative digital opportunities

• What impediments are to be removed to have a better business environment in Pakistan in IT sector?
• What steps are to be taken for the overall promotion of IT sector and IT Businesses in Pakistan?

MIT Technology Review magazine has published a list of 10 web startups to watch out. Even though I do not agree with their list (for reasons which will take up many posts), it is worth sharing as some of these up and coming startups are interesting. But wait, there’s more. There are is an article on the next bubble in the making and the problem with the business case of social networks. Check the latest issue of Tech Review and share what you found interesting.

The 10 startups are:

1. Pinger
2. Pownce
3. Qik
4. Dash
5. Ushahidi
6. QTech
7. 33Across
8. Peer39
9. Mashery
10. Anagran

Wi-Tribe is a joint venture between Qatar Telecom and A.A. Turki Corporation for Trading and Contracting (ATCO), which is offering Clearwire’s wimax technology and services to Jordan and (soon) to Pakistan.

In Pakistan, this is the brand that will emerge out of the acquisition of majority stake in Burraq Telecom that occurred more than a year ago. Globally though, their website suggests that they have some interesting plans of tying together the global community of their userbase.

They are hiring very heavily for their PK operations right now, which tells me go-live is probably another 6 months away if not more, but lets see what they can bring to our fledgling wimax market.

If you have any more news about the company, do share.

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is a new initiative at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which aims to serve as a launching pad for a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to launch innovative businesses in developing markets such as Pakistan. I was glad to see that Adnan Shahid, a Pakistani student at MIT is among the fellows of the Center. Below see an excerpt from Adnan’s profile and his plans for the incubation center.

Working as the Director IT Strategy with Mobilink, Pakistan’s largest cellular service provider, I witnessed the success of a single mobile phone turning into a business model. Mobilink started the ‘PCO Self Employment Package’, which included a wireless pay phone to be used as a Public Call Office. This one phone scheme provided employment opportunities to the less privileged households- becoming a financial earning source for the otherwise unemployed. This first-hand experience helped me develop a business idea and professional goal in life: to set-up a mobile technologies incubation center for low-income countries. The goal is to increase the commercialization of communication technologies and incentivize entrepreneurs and innovators.

I am working on getting further details about Adnan’s work and will report more on it as I collect the information. A bit more about the Legatum Center. Funded in Sep 2007 and based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is founded upon the idea that bottom-up entrepreneurship is the central driver of both economic development and the emergence of good governance. Iqbal Quadir leads the Legatum Center. The Center website has more information on how their approach can “create a path toward poverty alleviation, elimination of corruption, and improvements in health and education.” See this article from Guardian for more background on the center’s financial supporters.

I view the Legatum Center as academia’s contribution to make the concept of social businesses a reality.

This is a guest post by Aamir Attaa of ProPakistani.

Cellular companies in Pakistan are indulged in a play that rapes the consumers’ rights. We have seen so many instances where cellular companies mislead or not fully educate their customers regarding pricing, hence making a significant amount of black money.

Until now, we were witnessing such practices with either a single package or a single product, but Warid Telecom has dared to present whole range of their post-paid packages without mentioning the pulse rate. Thanks to Mr. Saeed Alam who met me at Ufone franchise (Commercial Market, Rawalpindi); he was there to shift his network from Warid to Ufone (through MNP), due to this particular cheat by Warid.

All prices are quoted for 30 seconds pulse rate on Warid’s official webpage, without exclusively mentioning it, which leads to a very confusing situation for customers.

So what happens is that users opt for packages that offer very attractive prices, but they never know that the pulse rate is 30 seconds instead of 1 minute. Yea a huge bill shakes and defiantly brings them back to their senses from a fantasy world where they think that Warid can offer them Rs. 0.70 per minute for off-net calls (we know that interconnect charges are Rs. 1.20 per minute, so off net calls can never be less than 1.20 in any case)

Is there any one who can fight for consumers? I guess no; PTA is going to take severe action against Warid by posting a "Notice" on a pop-up window when you open PTA’s website. That’s it…

So keep bearing!

Instaphone will soon announce that it has been able to raise the strategic investment needed to bring the firm out of hiatus. The investing party is still under wraps though.

Instaphone has had quite a rocky year. After the fledgling teleco was unable to raise investment from previous negotiations, the drama concluded with PTA canceling Instaphone’s license for failure to make its payments against license fees. This seemed to have been a final nail in the coffin, because any investor would then have to pay off Instaphone’s debts and license fees before investing in anything else.

News of this investment now is a bit surprising then. But what would it be able to do with the funds now? Here’s a brief strategic analysis of Instaphone and its options.

Read the rest …