Karachi Literature Festival 2012 was fortunately organized at a time when I had no clash with anything except one extra class on Sunday morning. Having missed the first event on account of being out of city visiting my sister and getting stuck there due to PIA strike, I was looking forward to attend interesting sessions. I was not disappointed and the two days had gave me a lot to think on.

Here are some of the sessions that I attended.

Manto and Partition

The first session that I attended was on Manto by historian Ayesha Jalal and it was moderated by M.R.Kazimi. After introductions, Mr. Kazimi spoke at length that made me yawn but I tried to keep up as much as possible. When Ayesha Jalal herself took the podium, the real fun began. I never read Manto but heard a lot about it and hearing about his life from AJ was a treat. Some of the cheeky statements made me laugh, such as:

“Manto was a heavy drinker, he became alcoholic after coming to Pakistan”

“Manto never fell for Ismat Chughtai, his wife did”

The perspective was new and gave a lot of insight into Manto’s life before and after partition.

Pen as Sword: Expressing the New Pakistani Narrative through Fiction

This sesssion was moderated by Khaled Ahmad and the real star in it was Ahmed Rashid. Although not a fan, I was looking forward to listen to the acclaimed expert on Afghanistan. I never read any of his books but read a lot about Ahmed Rashid’s views in articles. Khaled Ahmed made a sound beginning and compared the title “Pen as Sword” with the Urdu idiom. The session was designed to be conversational and once Ahmed Rashid finished his speech, the question and answer session proved enlightening.

To cut the story short, Ahmed Rashid stressed the importance of a sound political front with regards to Afghanistan and use English to greater level to bring awareness. Everyone, including the audience, lamented the fact that Urdu language was slowly dying due to its delegation to level of propagation language for the country and supporting only establishment and right-wing viewpoint. Fresh ideas are not encouraged in Urdu and neither is any narrative contrary to the army’s, making it difficult to bring any worthwhile addition to Urdu language and literature. Not much is being done except for some poetry which has lost its quality as well one compares it with the likes of Urdu poets from pre-partition days. Ignoring regional languages has also played a big role in restricting the level of education in the country and have stagnated their growth. Only Sindhi survives as Sindhi writers are still generating content for local consumption.

At one point, towards the end of the session, well known writer Zulfikar Haliphoto stood up and brought everyone’s attention to the matter that mainstream is only limited to English and Urdu, with the former reserved for the elites who attend such festivals and latter for those who don’t bother knowing what is happening in the rest of the country. He said that there are plenty of modern, secular and effective Sindhi writers raising their voice and on Salman Taseer’s murder, over 200 articles were written in Sindhi newspapers and magazines. One only has to pick them up and read but alas most of the country think the only worthwhile content to read is written either in English or Urdu which is a mistake committed by most, particularly those who live in the Urban areas.

A Conversation With Anatol Lieven

This session had a lot of promise but proved rather disappointing. Anatol Lieven, who wrote the popular book of 2011 “Pakistan: A Hard Country”, was the main star of the show with Ayesha Siddiqa, Mohsin Hamid and Ghazi Salauddin as the moderators. Anatol gave a short summary of the book that focused on Pakistan as a society that was resilient and was against extremism as a whole due to its blood relations and bonds … but the same structure prevented it from progress and held it back.

When the time came for questions and answers, Ayesha Siddiqa fired some direct and pointed questions that forced Anatol to say something about the lack of criticism on army in his book. Anatol however remained evasive and never answered her properly, forcing Ayesha to ask harder questions. At one point I really believed that she will simply grab his collar, shake him and threaten to sit on him if he didn’t answer properly. Thankfully the turn moved on towards Mohsin Hamid and Ghazi Salauddin who remained a lot more receptive and polite, their questions a lot more relaxed.

I felt that Anatol, despite his brilliant writing, was not made for stage. He seemed flustered and it was difficult to follow his chain of thought as he attempted to answer questions. It could be stage fright or the mere fact that he sat with Ayesha Siddiqa on the stage was terrorizing him (there was a tweet circulating that Anatol had requested more moderators as Ayesha Siddiqa would eat him alive at one-to-one session). Except for one question towards the end, Anatol simply beat around the bush while answering and that kind of made the session disappointing.

Today’s Pakistan: An Economic and Political Perspective

I came late to this session and didn’t get the chance to hear much. The session included Asad Sayeed, Ishrat Hussain, Anatol Lieven and Maleeha Lodhi with Ghazi Salauddin as the moderator. I remember some parts of Ishrat Hussain’s talk where we told how some of the technocratic solutions for Pakistan’s economy, as they had prepared and hoped to work during Musharraf’s time as the sole leader of the country, failed due to the fact that they were simple but flawed. The solutions to Pakistan’s economic woes should have been dynamic in nature and take into account various factors that would have made a better impact on the country.

Anatol also shared his views by talking about the complexities of Pakistan’s political system and how it affects the economy (and he slowly gained strength in his voice since the crowd was smaller and the sight of tea got him excited).

Pakistani Zabanon Ka Adab/Pakistani Languages

I came late to this session on Sunday owing to an extra class that had quiz as well. The session was curated by Mohammed Hanif and the poets were Amar Sindhu, Ahmad Fouad and Nukhbah Langah. At the time of my entry it was Nukhbah Langah’s turn and she started to read the Seraiki poem “Meda Ishq” for the audience. Her voice had clarity and a hint of haunting melody, creating a peaceful listening environment which was made lively by Hanif Mohammed at intervals.

At one point when Nukhbah apologized to the audience regarding speaking in English despite the session being about Pakistani languages, Mohammed Hanif chirped

“Koi masla nahi, aakhir English bhi to Pakistan ki ilaqai zaban hai”

(No worries, English is also Pakistan’s native language)

Education In Pakistan With A Focus On Textbooks

This proved to be a enlightening session. Although I had a thorough understanding of the topic, it was still great to listen to the expert. The panel included Rubina Saigol, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Tariq Rahman, Faisal Bari and Baela Jamil. The moderator was Ameena Saiyid. I didn’t listen much to Rubina but Faisal Bari presented a good case regarding state of education. His points were referred by others when their turn came.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, in his great style, stressed the importance of proper education at lower levels. He gave the example of surface tension, a concept in Physics, which was poorly explained in Pakistani textbooks while even the lower quality textbooks around the world explained it better. He said the culture of handing down information and root-learning it without explanation and understanding is hurting students growth and has been a major factor in making them run away from science and maths. The lack of trained teachers and large number of ghost schools in the provinces is a major obstacle in Pakistan’s progress.

Tariq Rahman was as enlightening as ever as he stressed the importance of education from linguistic point of view. He explained about Pakistan’s languages that are used in the country and how they contribute to early education. He shed light on how the students were misguided in history regarding languages and attempt to bring them under the official narrative by painting a “Hindu India” and its “Hindu Languages” that have nothing to do with Pakistan and Pakistani languages (namely Urdu). He also traced the origins of Urdu and how it is being used as brainwashing medium for students throughout the country.

Baela Jamil was last to speak but she spoke well. She told about the state of textbooks and how attempts were made to improve them. She said that Urdu writers that have been writing Urdu textbooks for decades are stuck in the same mindset and despite repeated attempts they still haven’t seen reason. Urdu books look more like Islamic Studies books as they start from “Hamd” and “Sana” (respecting Allah and his last Prophet) and following up with lessons in morality, good living, Jihad etc. She also gave example of a research that was conducted in 85 districts of the country and students were interviewed. As per the result, about 45% of the students couldn’t read Urdu despite it being compulsory subject and most complained about the subject being too Islamic, full of repetitive lessons across different classes and little in the way of learning.

The Mother-Tongue As A Medium of Instruction

This session could have been much better. The panel included (Retd) Justice Wajiuddin, Zubeida Mustafa, Abbas Rashid and Ray Brown. The moderator was Arfa Sayeda Zehra. Everyone, including the moderator, spoke in favor of having Mother Tongue as the early education language except for Justice Wajiuddin. He said he suffered a lot due to his early education in Urdu and when he came to college, he couldn’t understand a single thing for first 6 months and through sheer hard work managed to learn English. He stressed on the fact that all the hard work done to prepare knowledge in English should not be thrown away by attempting to use native languages as medium of instruction, otherwise great institutions like KGS, Aitchison College etc will wither away.

Both the audience and the moderator of the session took on the retired judge on this and reminded him that it wasn’t about discarding everything but only about using mother-tongue for early education and then introducing other languages. Ray Brown gave a great example of an African country where British Council not just attempted to develop written script of their spoken languages but also saw the remarkable results on children that were educated in the mother-tongue in the initial school years before introducing them to English.

The Silent Minority: A Voice for the Voiceless

This proved to be disappointing session. The hall was barely 30% full and the panel included Khaled Ahmed, Tariq Rahman and Stefan Weidner with Haris Ghazdar as the moderator. Haris spoke well and gave the podium to Khaled Ahmed who spoke about ethnic minorities (Shias mostly). He stressed on the fact that how killings take place with impunity and anyone can get killed for speaking against, just like in the case of Salman Taseer; therefor there is a great need for effort to give minorities such as Shias and non-Muslims greater share of voice in the country.

Tariq Rahmen spoke about linguistic minorities as there are about 62 languages in Pakistan that make around 4.5% of the country’s population and are in danger of going extinct. The reasons he stated was the power rested with languages like Urdu (which was made national language by Jinnah on the ill-advice of his companions) as well as overwhelming population of other popular native languages.

Stefan Weidner simply said he is no expert and was placed in the wrong session as a panelist, thus his part concluded fastest compared to any speaker I heard in this festival.

Click to view slideshow.

Filed under: Current Affairs Tagged: Anatol Lieven, Karachi Literature Festival 2012, klf 2012, Tariq Rahman

Time for the Karachi Literature Festival again, for the third year running. Once more, it promises to be an exciting event, a real silver lining for the city. See updated programme at the KLF website. Here’s a preview by novelist Bina Shah – read it and salivate if you can’t attend. Video and photos from previous years are also online. Just to get you going – here’s a four-minute short documentary from last year’s event, by Mateela Films.

The 30-minute documentary is also at the British Council Pakistan‘s Vimeo site.

By Hamza Usman

An inevitable question Pakistanis always ask me is, “what are you?” Often, I’ve wondered the same question. Besides ‘Pakistani,’ I don’t know what else to say.  I’m not Balochi or Sindhi. I can’t speak Punjabi. In my house, besides English, Urdu is the only other language spoken. When people ask me what language my parents speak, that’s what I tell them. Unlike many of my acquaintances, I don’t come from a town or village in interior Pakistan. Like millions in Pakistan, my family migrated from India. My grandparents’ families originate from Delhi, Lucknow and Aligarh, the bastions of Urdu-speaking peoples in India. In Pakistan, I am merely a ‘Muhajir;” an Urdu speaking migrant from India, now living in Karachi.

My family, like millions of others, came to Pakistan believing Jinnah’s ideal, searching for a homeland that was ours, for all Muslims, with freedom, tolerance and dignity. During those waning years of the British Empire, freedom across the Subcontinent was not a novel idea; it was a dream that had existed for decades. Students from the Aligarh Muslim University took up the cause of an independent homeland for Muslims; the university was known for the caliber and number of intellectuals it produced espousing the cause for an independent Muslim state to exist alongside a Hindu majority one in the Subcontinent. Thinkers like Mohammad Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan were noted luminaries associated with the institution dubbed, ‘the Oxford of the East.’ Iqbal is largely celebrated in modern day Pakistan as the first ideologue championing a united Pakistan; today, his small rectangular tomb, a simple, stone structure in hues of dark crimson and burnt sienna, ensconced between the magnificent Badshahi Mosque and the grand Lahore Fort, welcomes visitors keen to learn about Pakistan’s past; a chapter of rich, Mughal heritage often obscured by the shame of Colonialism and the turbulence of Partition.

Other notable alumni of Aligarh Muslim University include Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1951. In his place as Pakistan’s second Prime Minister came Khwaja Nazimuddin, another Aligarh alumnus who was Pakistan’s second, incumbent Governor General after Mr. Jinnah’s sudden death in 1948 less than a year after Pakistan’s creation. Ghulam Mohammad, Pakistan’s third and last Governor General was also an alumnus; Ghulam Mohammad’s legacy of unchecked corruption and senility  heralded the beginning of Pakistan’s trials by promoting vice-regal politics, weakening democracy and laying the seeds for President Iskander Mirza and Field Marshal Ayub Khan to set a notorious precedent and declare Martial Law in 1958.  Coincidentally, Ayub also attended Aligarh Muslim University briefly.

One lesser known alumnus was Abu Bakr Ahmad (A.B.A.) Haleem, a noted scholar and educationist. Professor Haleem began his career in the Department of Political Science and History at Aligarh in 1923. Ayub Khan was one of students. By 1934, he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University and played a pivotal role in Pakistan’s formation by serving with the All-India Muslim League until Partition. Writer Mukhtar Masood describes Professor Haleem’s welcome to Jinnah, stating, “Mr. Jinnah, we are teaching history and you are making it.” After the birth of Pakistan, Professor Haleem was appointed the first Vice-Chancellor of Sindh University at the behest of Jinnah and later, the first Vice-Chancellor of Karachi University thus filling the noble distinction of being the first Vice-Chancellor for both institutions. In addition, he served in a variety of different roles and positions for the purposes of propagating education and progress in Pakistan. I refer to Professor Haleem because he was a lesser-known luminary who contributed to forging Pakistan’s identity in its early years; he was also my Great-Grandfather.

Following in his footsteps, I too graduated in Political Science and History, and like him, moved to Paris. His association with the Sorbonne and the University of Paris inspired me as I strolled down the Boulevard St. Michel as he once would have decades before, deep in thought, stopping at the Jardins du Luxembourg to sit in silent contemplation amidst the babbling fountains and the verdant green grass. Like him, I spoke French almost fluently. Like him, I expressed a desire for multilingualism and learnt Italian. Professor Haleem spoke over five languages; he even spoke Mandarin. According to my grandfather, he was invited to China to give a speech to Chairman Mao-Zedong on Chinese history.

In the late Professor’s time, the concept of nationhood was being redefined and the notion of identity that still troubles Pakistanis surfaced.  Gandhi argued that religion could not imply a separate nation since language, customs and culture dictated that, not belief. Jinnah contended that religion defined values, customs, beliefs and ideals, thus characterizing Muslims as a separate nation. With neither side willing to budge from their respective positions, the outcome of this arduous conflict was the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947.

Like me, Pakistan is still undergoing its identity crisis. Debate still looms whether the state is secular, as Jinnah envisioned, or Islamic, as his successors outlined. Its maturity and development into a cohesive nation has been hindered by weak democracy, military dominance in addition to poor governance, lack of resources and partisan politics. Like the former Yugoslavia, Pakistan is a federation of various ethnic groups, tribes, sects and peoples. The most poorly-defined of these groups are the so-called ‘Urdu-speaking’ Muslims that migrated to Pakistan after Partition from all over India. They are defined solely on the basis of language and stigmatized by the local, ethnic populations whose ancestors have pre-existed on Pakistani soil for centuries.

Urdu was a hybrid language growing in prominence under the Delhi Sultanate, but it wasn’t until the emergence of the Mughal Empire in 1527 that Urdu became a language of the regal court. It evolved from a derivative of Farsi to amalgamate Arabic, Sanskrit, Turkish and Hindi influences. As late as the siege of Delhi in 1857, Urdu remained a language of the elite and refined, lending much of its court-like stature to literature and poetry. Urdu speakers in places like Aligarh contributed greatly to Jinnah’s movement of an independent Muslim state in the Subcontinent. As a result, at Pakistan’s birth, Urdu was to be its lingua franca. Ostensibly, this would not only curtail any one ethnic group from dominating national affairs, it would also reinforce national identity through the use and extension of a common language, keeping the federation united.[1]

Naturally, this created tensions that still exist today. Pakistan at Partition was divided into East and West with only Urdu as its national language, however strong opposition and campaigning from Bengalis in East Pakistan made Bengali a national language during the 1950s. Pakistan’s Post-Colonial legacy ensured that English was not only its official language but lent its presence to its law courts, bureaucracy and military.  After its brutal Civil War in 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh and Pakistan was left with Urdu as its only national language. English remains the language of the elite, the powerful and the source of high-paying jobs. Prominent families send their children to English or American schools in the hope that acquiring this language will be a passport to success. As Zubeida Mustafa describes in The Guardian, “people believe that English is the magic wand that can open the door of prosperity. Policy-makers, the wielders of economic power and the social elites have also perpetuated this myth.[2]”

And this myth affects the language spoken in my home. Today, the Urdu around me is not the Urdu spoken during Partition. At that time, Urdu’s poetic language structure, its rich vocabulary and literature was common to most speakers. My generation has been fed a bastardized version of Urdu; an Urdu with informal tenses, new verbiage, interspersed with English to create what some call “minglish,” influenced by the melting pot of Karachi’s different cultures. The Urdu I speak can barely be called Urdu; it is Urdu to get by. I can order a cup of tea but I cannot wax eloquent on anything. When I watch television, news anchors speak a strange language and I struggle to read the ticker because I was never formally taught to read Urdu and I don’t know anyone who speaks the pure Urdu that once characterized my homeland.

Pakistan was envisioned as a poly-ethnic state where religion bound peoples together. The effect of nation-building has backfired since inception because ethnic identities remain prominent. Urdu has not achieved the massive national trickle-down effect it was intended to. Urdu is the first language of only 8% of Pakistanis whereas Punjabi, is spoken by almost 50% of the population.[3] In addition, over 70 smaller provincial languages and dialects exist in Pakistan.  Today, whilst much of the mainstream media as well as state-run public schools communicate in Urdu, it is not a first-language for Pakistanis by far. Those homes with access to English find a diminished impetus for learning Urdu as pragmatism and practical exigencies dictate the study of English, primarily because all higher examinations with the exception of Islamic studies in Pakistan are based on the Western models of education.

In my case, Urdu’s oral traditions and rich cultural legacy is lost to me. In Nehru’s words, “I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.”  I cannot read Ghalib unless it’s an English translation. I cannot even read the Urdu newspaper. I read Saadat Hassan Manto, revered as one of Pakistan’s greatest writers, in English. Often I wonder what richness of language is lost to me, what word play and complex grammatical structures I shall never understand, nor the depth of connotation that one Urdu word conveys but none in English compare.

Upon my return to Pakistan in 2009, I was faced with a quandary. I wanted to document the richness of this country and its cultural heritage; I wanted to highlight its history and its crumbling monuments, preserving those stories and retelling them for a new generation that doesn’t understand what Pakistan is, or what it once was. This new generation, fed on misinterpreted views of Islam accounts for much of the radicalization of the past few decades. I realized that if I needed to undo General Zia’s legacy of Islamization, I needed to show that the people living here weren’t always militant; that before there was a homeland for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, Parsis to name a few lived side by side in peace with Muslims.

Working for a television station, I was making a documentary film but realized my shortcomings when my co-producer handed me a script to OK. The script was written in Urdu. Like a toddler struggling with an elementary primer, I held my finger over each word trying to decipher the script, until I gave up a few lines after and told him it seemed OK to me. What else could I do? When a colleague amazingly remarked that I could speak French and Italian, I turned to her and in my broken Urdu, asked what use was it if I couldn’t speak the language of my own people?

After a few months of struggle, I left the documentary film-making world because of my language handicap and ventured toward Communications. I struggled with the bitter taste of irony, that I, privileged, educated, capable of helping this country through the miasma of failure, extremism, violence and stagnation, was powerless because I couldn’t speak the language properly.  Unlike Professor Haleem who made a difference to change Pakistan for the better, I was restricted and hindered by the same hopeful language that gave this country a voice. Today, my Urdu is mish-mashed with English incorporating more colloquial slang than literal Urdu. Like my Urdu, I find myself a mix of different peoples and personalities, Pakistani at heart, but at home nowhere.

 

 

When the term “group messaging” is used, the image which flashes in my mind is the time when we had devices which were nothing else than phones, when we used to make groups in lots of 10, as this was the limit per group in most of the 3xxx Nokia phones. Then came the 40 Series with the luxury of making larger groups and this perfectly coincided with a significant plunge in SMS prices. Then we got smart phones with endless possibilities and the cost of text messaging became negligible, here we forgot the original idea behind group messaging i-e. engaging with a lot of friends together, instead we resorted to forwarded messages and lame jokes.
Then came Chopaal, a brain child of Dr. Umar Saif. Chopaal aimed to change everything we did wrong about group messaging and guided us towards interactive group based discussions again. Another service which I used in those days was Mobi2weet; it was as popular as Chopaal as it brought the power of twitter without any additional charges. Both services faded away without giving their users any intimation of why they were being discontinued and whether these will be reincarnated again.

It is worth mentioning here that the idea was conceived during the aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Kashmir. Means of communication were insufficient and resources scarce, hence there was an imposing need to coordinate relief activities to make them effective. Dr. Saif created a rescue group and used it to broadcast messages to all the rescue workers in his area, thus his subscribers were able to receive messages and provide supplies on the basis of information provided by others.

This was to be the founding stone, and a pretty strong one of Chopaal, which has been rebranded and re-launched with the name and style of SMSALL. With a little less than half a million groups and over 4 million users, the service has already transmitted above 4 billion text messages till date and boasts a daily traffic of around 15 million text messages.

So let’s see what can be done with SMSALL, you can:

• Create profile
• Make your profile private/ public
• Create group
• Subscribe to a group
• Start a private group
• Activate/ Deactivate a group
• Send texts
• Give feedback

To do any of the above, the user should be armed with a mobile phone which is capable of sending and receiving text messages and credit if he/ she intends to send a text to the group and be heard. The services offered by SMSALL mean that it can be used in ways only limited by a user’s imagination.

• We can use it to keep in touch with our dear friends of the yesteryear;
• To re-live the quality time spent together by indulging in group discussions so that every one of the group can simultaneously see what others have to say;
• The service can be used to organize meetings, walks, dinners, seminars and other events;
• To share news, gossips and jokes with our near and dear ones;
• To subscribe to our favorite political party’s official group and show our support and solidarity (PTI & PML-N are already using SMSALL)
• To form interest-groups and discuss issues related with specific topics;

In addition to above we can use SMSALL in anything else which requires one-to-many or private conversations.

 

How SMSALL group messaging is different?

It engages you in ‘conference messaging’. Just like ‘reply-all’ feature of the email, a group message on SMSALL is sent to all group members with responses broadcast to the whole group as well. A very convenient way to keep in touch with small groups (of up to 20 people) with less than 140 characters on projects and daily tasks!

SMSALL is not only confined to individual users, corporate users are finding it extremely useful as it is more reliable than in-house GSM Modem based solutions being used by the corporate sector to broadcast bulk text messages. According to Mr. Idrees, the enthusiastic COO of SMSALL,

“We are the only player in the market who offers a legitimate and cost effective solution to corporate sector for reaching out to their customers without spending too much. Our solution can help any organization to build their new customer base and to develop a strong relationship with existing ones through interactive communication by forming loyalty groups”

 

The service can be used by:

• Retailers: To keep their customers posted about price changes
• Businessmen: To notify customers about unforeseeable closures, new offers and discounts
• Restaurants: To broadcast latest deals, take orders and communicate with permanent customers
• Political parties: To keep their followers engaged and informed
• Interest groups: To cultivate a habit of healthy discussions on topics of interest
• Educational institutions:
• To inform students about schedules, classes, seminars & results etc.
• To deliver periodic reports to parents & guardians
• Media & agencies: to interact with general public, arrange quizzes, conduct polls etc.

According to a document provided by the COO, SMSALL is providing following services to corporate customers:

• SMS API
• Customer Loyalty groups for targeted engagement
• SMS CRM solutions
• Contextual SMS advertising
• SMS surveys and event voting
• Facebook and Twitter integration
• Group messaging

 

Impressive clientele amassed by SMSALL includes but is not limited to:

• Major Political Parties
• Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N)
• Pakistan Tehreeq-e-Insaaf (PTI)
• Labor Party Pakistan
• TV channels
• GEO TV
• Organizations and Individuals
• Metro Cash and Carry Pakistan
• Oxford University Press
• British Council
• Ali Moeen Nawazish
• Tens of others, including schools, universities, call centers, ad agencies and local brands

 

Waqas Farooq, the CTO of SmsAll while explaining the challenges faced by the company told Telecompk:

“We worked days and nights and have created a powerful technology that can process a billion SMS a day. We are only constrained by the capacities allocated to us by telecom operators. Our vision is to register a new meaning of SMS communication in everyone’s mind.”

 

 

Conclusion

The service whose foundation was laid for the sole purpose of helping the needy can in no way be short of being impressive. However there are still a few doubts in my mind as to whether it really means something for a person like me who has the facility of internet whether in home, office or on the go?

The answer is quite simple; the service may not appeal to me and other “power users” as we are always connected to the internet and have the luxury of more than one ways of communication with our loved ones. But there are a lot of others who live in a remote part of our country where the only means of communication is a mobile phone, and that too a black-and-white one, these people need a platform to communicate and socialize with those who they cannot reach with any other means of communication.
However, there are still areas in which I think SMSALL needs to improve itself if it really wants to remain the leader in the market. For instance, the website doesn’t offer all the features available via SMS. New users find it complicated as the service foes not interactively guide the user about all features when a user is signed up. So far, SMSALL has grown virally but to increase its growth, they must improve their web presence and increase capacities to handle occasional delays that users have to face. I was told by the COO that website revamp is under process and soon users will be able to use SMSALL on the internet as well.

So let’s sum it up with a few pros and cons

Pros

• Same short code on all operators
•  Same tariff for all networks
• A lot of options to make and manage groups
• Attractive for the corporate sector

Cons

• Expensive for package users
• Unimpressive website
• Complicated SMS interface

 

It may still have some shortcomings, but I have taken the liberty of creating a group on SMSALL where TelecomPk followers will be able to follow all the latest news, previews, reviews and much more pertaining to the tech and telecom industry. Joining the group is simple, type:
Join telecompk
and send it to 8002 (Rs 1.2+ tax)