Russia’s VimpelCom Confirms Merger with Orascom [Updated]: ProPakistani

Russia’s VimpelCom Confirms Merger with Orascom [Updated]
PTCL Introduces MPLS based Global IP Connect Service
We Got a New Section: Letters to Editor
Humor – Need to Break Monotony in Ufone TVCs
Why Does Outsourcing Fail?

Russia’s VimpelCom Confirms Merger with Orascom [Updated]

Posted: 04 Oct 2010 10:03 AM PDT

Russia’s VimpelCom Confirms Merger with Orascom [Updated] is a post from: ProPakistani

Russia's VimpleCom has reportedly offered a lucrative sum, said to be as high as USD 6.8 billion, to Naguib Sawiris to get hold of controlling stakes in Orascom Telecom.

Reports say that possible deal may end up in a merger of both telecom companies, in addition, VimpleCom will acquire 51 percent controlling stakes in Orascom.

This is Naguib's second attempt in this quarter to sell off Orascom's shares. Earlier, deal with MTN couldn't close due to disputed fate of Djezzy, group's highest revenue generating arm in Algeria.

Russian Media and Bloomberg said that deal would include Orascom's African and Asian operations along with Italy's Wind communication, however, it is not cent percent clear if Algerian network will be part of deal or not.

At the same time, reports said that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s is likely to visit Algeria this week to engage Algerian Government over the deal.

It merits mentioning here that Russia enjoys healthy relations with Algeria as compared to South Africa or Egypt.

Orascom and Vimplecom both declined to comment on the said reports [We have confirmations now, see below update] .

An earlier bid to sell most of OT’s non-Egyptian units to South Africa’s MTN Group fell apart largely because of a dispute between the firm and Algeria over some $600 million in back taxes owed by Djezzy. Algeria had blocked the deal, saying it had the first option to buy the Algerian subsidiary. The country, however, has yet to move on that purchase.

Complicating matters for OT is a new tax claim by Algeria, an issue which may be eased with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the North African nation this week.

Algerian authorities last week handed OT a new notification about a $230 million tax reassessment for 2008 and 2009.

It is interesting to mention here that VimpelCom is jointly owned by Russia’s Alfa Group and Norway’s Telenor.

Update:

We have confirmations now, from VimpleCom and Orascom, that the deal is almost closed between the two parties.

Under the terms of the deal, VimpelCom will own – through Weather – 51.7% of Orascom Telecom Holding and 100% of Wind Italy.

Under the terms of the Transaction, Weather shareholders, largely Naguib Sawiris, will contribute to VimpelCom their shares in Weather in exchange for a consideration consisting of newly issued VimpelCom common shares, US$1.8 billion in cash and certain assets that will be demerged from Orascom Telecom and from Wind Italy.

Orascom Telecom’s investments in Egypt and North Korea, will be transferred to the current Weather shareholders and wont be part of the deal. Wind Hellas Telecommunications in Greece is entirely excluded from the transaction.

The VimpelCom shares issued to Weather shareholders at the closing of the Transaction will represent a 20% economic interest and a 18.5% voting interest in the enlarged VimpelCom group.

The deal is valued at around US$6.8 billion in stock and cash.

Upon issuance of the new VimpelCom shares, Telenor and Altimo will hold 31.7% and 31.4% of the economic rights and 29.3% and 36.4% of the voting rights, respectively, of VimpelCom. Minority shareholders in VimpelCom will represent 17% of the economic rights and 15.7% of the voting rights.

It is intended that Weather will designate two members to an enlarged VimpelCom board of eleven members, while Telenor and Altimo will each continue to designate three board members. Three board members will continue to be unaffiliated with any major shareholder.

Naguib Sawiris, the Chairman of Weather, commented:

“This landmark transaction is a true reflection of the high quality of our Orascom Telecom and Wind Italy assets and of the significant value that we have created over the years for our shareholders. We share a common vision with our new partners at VimpelCom of the exciting prospects of our new, enlarged and diversified telecoms platform.

Moreover, I am confident that our minority shareholders in Orascom Telecom will benefit from the synergies created by the combination of the two entities, especially in the area of procurement, and by the overall strengthening and de-risking of the Orascom Telecom balance sheet. I am looking forward to being fully involved in the new group and to joining VimpelCom’s Supervisory Board.”

Via [AP, Bloomberg, WSJ and Cellular News]

PTCL Introduces MPLS based Global IP Connect Service

Posted: 04 Oct 2010 03:24 AM PDT

PTCL Introduces MPLS based Global IP Connect Service is a post from: ProPakistani

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) today announced its connectivity solution with multiple applications in the form of Global IP Connect service.

Based on internet protocol, this service will allow Pakistani companies whose offices are located across the globe to connect and transfer data in a private secure manner over a MPLS infrastructure provided by PTCL within Pakistan, while global connectivity is achieved through an extensive network of PTCL global network partners.

Not only this, flexible topologies are also offered to customers depending upon the class of service selected based on the enterprises' applications e.g. real time, transactions, data base and email applications.

Customers here can choose from Platinum, Gold and Silver packages and can benefit from bandwidth ranging from 64Kbps to 1Gbps.

IP Connect

The "IP Connect" service is based on Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks (IP-VPN)
This product is aimed for those requiring high security/bandwidth comparable to that provided by Private Leased Circuits as well as scalable connectivity to provide the future growth changes in size and volume of the customer business.
MPLS IP VPN from PTCL delivers a flexible, customizable, any-to-any network that lets you connect office headquarters, branches, distribution facilities, data centers and other locations, with ease.
You can also converge all your existing business traffic, even latency-sensitive applications onto one network.

Product Differentiator

IP Connect – Basic
IP Connect – Guaranteed; CoS: Silver, Gold and Platinum

Benefits

Intranet VPN: The capability to interconnect all remotely located sites into an Intranet
Any-to-any connectivity: The ability to create an efficient fully meshed network providing any-to-any communication among sites
Security: Enabled by establishing VPN connectivity over PTCL Dedicated MPLS network.
Flexibility: Simplicity in redefining the customer network topology
Scalability: PTCL MPLS network architecture easily adapts to growth in complexity and volume in the customer's network
Managed Options: Managed Router options
Quality of Service: Support of different Guaranteed Classes of Services depending on customer applications requirements
Availability & Reliability: Supported by redundancy in PTCL MPLS network
Support: Dedicated 24/7 support, 365 days a year via PTCL’s Customer Care Centres(CCC).
Reduced Cost and simply operations

SEVP Commercial Naveed Saeed while elaborating the effectiveness and usage of this service said that it not only provides private and secure connectivity to our customers but is also scalable in its MPLS network architecture which would easily adapt to growth in complexity and volume in the customer's network, topology which can then be easily redefined. It also enables customers to interconnect remotely located sites in to an intranet and create an efficient fully meshed network providing any-to-any communication among sites.

Zaman Gulzar EVP Corporate Services and Product Development said this service supports multiple types of applications such as data, voice and multimedia. The coverage at the

moment is being provided in 21 countries in Asia, 58 countries in EMEA and 30 countries in the Americas. He also added that in the future PTCL plans to provide its corporate customers most updated connectivity solutions to meet their increasing business requirements and to keep them connected internationally. "A single network supporting all your business' application needs"

We Got a New Section: Letters to Editor

Posted: 04 Oct 2010 01:44 AM PDT

We Got a New Section: Letters to Editor is a post from: ProPakistani

More recently, we have been receiving plenty of letters from our readers on daily basis. Seeing the trend, ProPakistani has decided to dedicate a section, specifically for the letters we receive from our readers.

Now onwards, all letters will be published under a single heading, on daily basis, or whenever we have them with us.

It must be noted that of letter written to ProPakistani and published on this website will reflect the thoughts and feelings of our readers, while ProPakistani may or may not, partially or fully, agree with its content.

You can contact us through this page or email us here: letters [a] propakistani.com (remove spaces and replace [a] with @ )

Here goes our First Letter:

Telenor’s Identity Crisis

Now Brand’s power has always been a derivative of from the goodwill and name recognition it has earned over time. It is established only after a company has outsmarted its rivals due to competitive rates and quality of service. It translates into higher sales volume and higher profit margins against rival products.

I fail to understand as to why Telenor is still in search of brand equity even Six years after its emergence on Pakistani scene. Is the ship drowning? Why the company is so under-confident? Thematic campaigns are meant for initial years only and once a company 'settles down' it starts calling the shots merely on its name only. Its like a drowning government whose ministers yell at others and say," hold your horses, we are not going anywhere" and one fine morning we find them behind the bars/It is ironical that Telenor still could not secure its brand and create direct link with its customers.

Earlier the company came under fire for showing bravado of a Young-man who tries to make amorous advances to the girl of her choice. The company cut a sorry figure and had to stop running the ad.

Mehaak Bukhari

Marketing Executive

Blue Area, Islamabad

Humor – Need to Break Monotony in Ufone TVCs

Posted: 04 Oct 2010 12:50 AM PDT

Humor – Need to Break Monotony in Ufone TVCs is a post from: ProPakistani

The study of advertising usually begins with a focus on creative strategy and tactics. Creative strategy determines what the advertising message is going to say while the creative tactics deal with how the message strategy will be implemented.

Humor is one of the most widely used techniques in advertising around the world, as about one out of five television ads contain humorous appeal. Although the use of humor in advertising has its origins in the early days of the business, its widespread use as advertising strategy is a more of a recent phenomenon.

However, few studies in this topic have addressed the fact that advertisements attempting humor vary dramatically in the level of humor they actually evoke in the target audience. While some ads are spectacularly successful at raising a laugh, while others fail to do so.

In Pakistan, use of humor in advertising is not a very common practice; however, there are some brands that have used it successfully and made lasting impact in the minds of the consumers.

Currently, the telecom sector, undoubtedly, is the biggest advertiser in Pakistan both in terms of advertising spend and airing of television commercials. This sector has used humour successfully in their advertisements which was first introduced as an advertising platform in telecom by Asher Yaqub Khan, a local marketing guru of the telecom industry.

His managerial career took off at Ufone's launch where he was a significant team player. Working as a manager marketing he was the first one to implement the idea of humor in Ufone's commercials. The TV viewers must have remembered the Salma and Shabbo commercials which Faisal Qureshi, Adeel Hashmi and his team had produced.

At present, Asher is working in Banglalink, an Orascom Group's company in Bangladesh, as Chief Marketing Officer and now has 14 years of experience in the telecom sector.

Asher previously worked with Mobilink, as Director VAS, IR, LDI before joining Ufone in February 2008 for the second time, where he was responsible for a major turnaround in the company.

In 2006 Asher had left Ufone and joined DVCOM as GM marketing where again he used humor technique in BIG Time calling cards commercials.

After DVCOM Asher worked with Mobilink as Director VAS, IR, LDI for almost 22 months, where he couldn't implement his humor technique as his position offered lesser freedom in creative inputs in the company's advertising concepts. However, it is interesting to note Akbar Khan was his counterpart as of head of brands at Mobilink at that time.

In early 2008, Ufone was facing severe marketing and network issues and the brand was not keeping pace with the market growth. Asher was once again brought back to Ufone as Chief Marketing Officer; through his dynamic approach he once again made Ufone a successful brand in the telecom sector. He was responsible for a major upturn in Ufone in a year-and-a-half.

If we look at the statistics for 2008 and the first half 2009 for Ufone, we see that the company did pretty well in grabbing customers and also showed positive financial results.

After becoming the CMO of Ufone Asher brought Akbar Khan in his team who had been working with Mobilink as head of brands.

Although, Asher has left Ufone, his policies including advertising approach has not changed since then. His successor does not seem to have enough clout to choose different technique / platform.

The current Ufone's humorous advertising platform with Faisal Qureshi, Adeel Hashmi and his team now has become very monotonous and not creating similar impact with the viewers as they used to.

With these funny ads, Ufone has failed to grab the corporate customer. The brand is now more of known amongst the teenagers only, unlike Telenor and Mobilink who brought funny and decent TVCs in parallel to cap all types of audiences.

For Ufone commercials, concept and production is being undertaken by Faisal Qureshi and his team.

Common man's wisdom will suggest that its Ufone's current marketing team behind all these funny ads, however, when discussed with a creative head of an advertising agency and a close ally of team, the source mentioned, that the team still discusses with Asher Yaqub about any new idea that comes to their mind, although Asher is no more part of Ufone.

Under the circumstances Ufone marketing team needs to come up with their own ideas, to break the monotony of the same faces which some time become more powerful than the brand. It seems that the current marketing team of Ufone lacks creative ideas which prevent it from taking any new initiatives.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Why Does Outsourcing Fail?

Posted: 03 Oct 2010 10:15 PM PDT

Why Does Outsourcing Fail? is a post from: ProPakistani

Before we delve into this topic and skylark our way through the tribulations of why outsourcing I would like to inform you why I feel I am qualified to write this article? The most important reason is that I have headed and managed a contact center (one of the largest in my own country – Pakistan) as well as owned a business that relied on the west for an income.

Now let's look at the world industry – take any that you feel would outsource any business unit to another concern and you will see that globally people do not have a shortage of money rather they have lost the ability to manage their black berry's, their laptops, their businesses and social calendars thus making them lose the most precious commodity ‘time’.

Weapons that were supposed to make us more efficient destroyed jobs for secretaries, assistants and line managers thus dumping too much onto one person. So in reality when some CEO sitting in the west decides that he want to live a few years longer after having had a brain fart from stress and a heart attack that his wife was cheating on him because he was married to his electronic toys he decided to lose what he thought of as excess baggage. RESPONSIBILITY!

The west overburdened with time constraints and with the realization that people and jobs were being replaced by mechanical toys that would only function if one spent time on them decided to outsource business or you might say responsibility.

Outsourcing started because the west decided that it had lost too much money in wasting time and could not recover its losses irrespective of the high cost that its people had already cost them so they decided to shirk the responsibility and went shopping for someone ready to do their dirty jobs.

As they wandered through Heathrow and JFK they realized that the majority of Asians there were willing to go to the homeland and set up an American shop back home. After sifting through the nationalities they agreed upon the Indians and opened shop there. For the past few years Bangalore was hub of activity in India and most companies like Dell etc displayed openly that its contact center was based off-shore.

This spread like wild fire and Pakistan jumped into the game and very shortly the west was abundant with people who had failed at everything that they tried in Pakistan and every job that the west could give them so they decided to tap it with one catch – Greed!

By offering the same results at pennies on the dollar South East Asians who had virtually no experience used their enterprising abilities to get the business with heavy contracts in play. Yes a cult following started and people in the East found that working at night in a call center was a brilliant excuse to not have to tell your parents where you are.

The best countries that survived this test of time were those who invested wisely. Take a look at China. The chinks as we all call them spent close to a decade learning English. They raised an army in the form of an entire generation that has the ability to speak in any dialect along with technical abilities and can actually quite sensibly offer you the best value for money. Second they built an industry to take over complete control over production and today the trend is that if it's designed in the west then the Chinese have the ability to produce it at a billionth the cost.

In case you did not know all APPLE products or as we call them Macs are extremely cheap to produce as apples factory in China sells it to apple. The best investment that Jobs did was to save his own job by contracting the business out to a country that could actually produce equipment for him at such a cost where even after taxes the retail price and the high markups would only lead to pure profit. The cheeky Chinese kept coming up with cheaper ways to produce electronics and everything that has a stamp on it from the west.

Today I possess and I-PAD that was from apple and I find it very cumbersome. I also have two versions of the same thing in android and symbian designed by the Chinese known as Knock Pad and Hi Pad. My mac has limitations but every time I use one of these hybrid machines they not only run faster they fly.

I am so in love with the aspect that they cost a few pennies that I decided to visit the factories. I learnt over there that I was a blithering idiot to have bought a Sony PSP for over three hundred dollars and it had limitations. My host presented me with one that had a built in 5 megapixel camera HDMI output and the ability to catch television signals as well as AM / FM and the best thing was that you could pop in a sim and use outlook express – when I asked the retail price – I almost choked on my beverage when I found out that at the equivalent FOB rate this product only cost less than fifty dollars.

Get what I'm saying. These toys were radically affordable and excellent and better quality than what you got from a brand name in the west.

Back to outsourcing… Outsourcing fails because people give in to the seven deadly sins most significant of which are greed and basic bottom line dishonesty. People also do not realize what assets they possess and often make up stories to get contracts.

The west has had its fingers burnt and are no longer ready to give any crucial business to any eastern country. We need to establish honesty in realizing what our assets are and the losses we will have should we falter on our commitments.

If you are into outsourcing then stop worrying about money start focusing on a lower payback as the west wants you to work hard as well as over smart. The outsourcing industry is filled with cheeky over smart people who are not educated enough to get any job done. This is common for all people or countries where this service provision is a high export item.

The best areas for outsourcing that pay well are as follows –

Knowledge process industry,
Niche market technical solutions and
the ability to produce quality at a lowered cost.

If you would like to know how outsourcing can help you and how you can benefit then feel free to contact me on skype and I can tell where to go and how to set yourself up NOT to fail. As I am a capitalist I will charge you but the best thing is before you call me on skype I want you to make a promise to your self – you will focus on delivering quality and not money and best of all realize that nothing beats hard work!

If you're looking for me on skype my nick is "ohbyteme"