PTA, PEMRA to roll out regulations for mobile apps content, programme | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

PTA, PEMRA to roll out regulations for mobile apps content, programme

By Muhammad Yasir

KARACHI: Dr Muhammad Yaseen, Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has been working to formulate combined and converged regulations with Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to facilitate content and programme developers for mobile phone applications.

Speaking with the media in the sideline of award distribution ceremony “Calling All Innovators Pakistan 2010” organised by Nokia, he said the PTA has been in talks with PEMRA to devise license fee structure and revenue sharing mechanism in order to offer single-window facility to investors, content developers and programme producers on the mobile phone applications.

Dr Yaseen said the policy and regulations are likely to be rolled out in the first half of the next year, however, the authority will continue to conduct awareness campaign on Value-Added Services (VAS) in the meantime with different stakeholders of the telecom sector including cellular operators and mobile phone handset makers.

The authority has been negotiation with different cellular operators to offer win-win solution for the content developers to encourage them towards telecom sector, he said and added “Cellular phones operators initially set 20 percent revenue sharing with mobile applications’ content developers but they have broken the ice and now placed offers of 30-50 percent revenue sharing with them.

PTA continuous efforts on content development and VAS utilisation will strengthen the cellular phone sector to drive their healthy revenue in the telecom sector.

Cellular phone operators’ revenues should be scaled up significantly through data services at par with international standard of 14 percent share in the overall pie of income earning, which is currently very minimal, he said and quoted “ the share of VAS reached Rs 2 billion in overall revenue of Rs 357 billion of a quarter.”

The development of contents and programming through mobile phone applications needs localisation of apps as per national traditions, local culture and regional languages. This approach will prove milestone for mobile operators and handset makers to pocket healthy incomes at the end of the day, Dr Yaseen said.

He said the development of mobile Apps would lead to the launch of 3G technology and Mobile TV, which will invite handsome investment in the country by the next year.

Imran Mehmood, General Manager Nokia Pakistan, said the localisation of apps is the priority of handset markers to facilitate a large number of customers in the country.

He added the providing a platform to content developers is the part of the Nokia strategy to channelise their skills in the innovative crazy company.

GM Nokia said the Pakistanis mobile phone users demands witnessed significant growth as there are very fun loving and attractive through their gadgets.

Pakistan cellular phone market witnessed the highest download applications as 4.5 million tools downloaded recently including Qura’an Recitation, High Speed Games and Ebody and Nib.

The number of newspapers and TV channels are onboard with Nokia mobile apps, making it easy to communicate with the masses by their handsets. At the end, Zeeshan Aftab, Asif Jaffery and Umer Cheema were declared winner for the first, second and third position of the contest.
Source: Daily Times
Date:11/16/2010