A petition for earliest auction of third-generation telecom licenses (3G, 4G, LTE) has been accepted by Supreme Court of Pakistan for hearing. A three member bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and comprising on other two judges Mr. Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry and Mr. Justice Gulzar Ahmed heard the petition filed by Mr. Khurram Shahzad. Petitioner has made Federation [...]

Telecom and Information Technology industry hasn’t been touched – at any level – in the finance bill for year 2013-14 that was presented yesterday. All the taxes are likely to remain unchanged, leaving the telecom sector still one of the most taxed domain in the country. While there was no hope of any decrement in taxes, telecom industry has shown its reservations over the 19.5 [...]

Digitization and centralization of data — of any kind at any level — has not only helped the communities to harness the prosperity but has streamlined various functions of the society. Pakistan is country with notable deficiency of data digitization, leaving the businesses, non-profits and individuals to rely on conventional co-ordination and reporting methods that ultimately pose serious compromises over the throughput. There are countless [...]

Anusha Rehman Khan, the newly appointed State Minister for IT and Telecommunication, managed to grab media attention on her first day in office by saying that Google could face a blanket ban in the country if it doesn’t listen to Pakistani government’s request of removing blasphemous videos from YouTube. Ms. Rehman, who remained a vocal and active member of National Assembly Standing Committee on Information [...]

Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom, which remained minister-less during majority of last five years and arguably one of worst performing era in the the ministry, spent over Rs. 3 billion from a secret fund, revealed an Auditor General report. According to the report, MoIT was allocated Rs 1.329 billion of secret funds in the federal budget during 2009-10 and another Rs 1.422 billion during [...]

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan and Ministry of Information Technology & Telecom (MoIT&T) have agreed to benefit from each other’s experience in the field of information and communication technology for proliferation of ICT in Pakistan. It was agreed during the visit of high level delegation of Ministry of Information Technology & Telecom who paid visit to HEC Islamabad. The delegation was led by [...]

In a shocking development, a large scale cyber attack at Pakistan – aimed at gathering military scale, government and corporate data – emanating from India has been uncovered by Norman, a global security leader in malware analysis for enterprises. Norman Securities, based out of Oslo, Norway, in its report titled “Unveiling an Indian Cyber-attack Infrastructure”, said that Indian cyber attack aimed at Pakistan and other [...]

Recently held election in Pakistan saw massive criticism due to various rigging incidents in different constituencies of the country. Observers said that at least 10 percent – or 7,000 – polling stations were reportedly rigged to influence the voters. Bogus votes, pressurizing voters, in-availability of ballot boxes, papers and various other similar problems were reported in different parts of the country. Experts – the optimistic [...]

Polling time in Pakistan for Election 2013 has ended. Election results and updates have already started to pop-up, however, social media is already filled with many unpleasant rigging videos and images from today’s elections. Election-Day rigging isn’t new in Pakistan but filming such incidents and exposing these rigging videos to entire world is a new phenomenon. Despite the fact that mobile phones were not allowed [...]

General Elections 2013 are happening at a time when Social Media usage is on the rise and around 25-28 million population of Pakistan is connected to internet for various purposes. Similarly, there are over 120 million mobile phone users in the country. This population, which is either connected to internet or via mobile phones, is gigantic. Collecting data from this population is relatively easy and [...]

Election Commission of Pakistan has barred the voters to bring their mobile phones to polling station on May 11th, 2013, i.e. Election Day. ECP said that decision was taken to ensure the transparency, avoid any possibility of poll-rigging, violence on Election Day, manipulation of votes or selling of votes. ECP said that it had enough evidences of voters taking pictures of their ballot papers as [...]

Pakistan Muslim League (N), through Senator Ishaq Dar, has registered a complaint with Election Commission of Pakistan against Telenor Pakistan for supporting a specific political party without naming it. PML (N), in a letter to ECP, said that Telenor Pakistan has allocated funds for promoting and funding the election campaign of a political party. In response, SECP has sought Telenor Pakistan’s response on the complaint [...]

Punjab Information Technology Board has launched this Android app, with which anyone can report Election violations, that too anonymously. With this, extremely easy to use mobile app, anyone can take a picture of violations and send these complaints to a centralized monitoring team that is likely to take appropriate action. This Punjab Government backed app offer various categories, and users can report violations by clicking [...]

Senate’s Defence Committee has taken the initiative for the formulation of Cyber Security Policy to preserve, promote and protect Pakistan’s national security digitally. Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman of Senate Defence Committee  — who was attending the Cyber Secure Pakistan Conference as Chief Guest – announced this today. Senator Mushahid Hussain, while defining the role of the Task Force on Cyber Security Policy, said the [...]

In a decent effort to get their message to the decision makers, traders from across Pakistan have requested the authorities to withdraw newly imposed taxes on mobile phone handsets to save the industry. In an advert published today in various newspapers, Karachi Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Lahore Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Karachi Electronics Dealers Association, Anjuman-e-Tajiran Hall Road Lahore, All Hyderabad Mobile Phone [...]