From: Julian Macassey <julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil>
Subject: Pakistan Telephones
Date: 30 Jul 91 13:55:03 GMT
Reply-To: Julian Macassey <julian@bongo.info.com>
Organization: The Hole in the Wall  Hollywood California U.S.A.

	Pakistan has a telephone network that seems to be there as
proof that you can create a system that doesn't work and then charge
people for the priviledge of making call attempts, receiving wrong
numbers and shouting to try and be heard.

	The Pakistan system is a government monopoly, but there is
talk of privatising it. The COs vary from cord boards with booked
calls between towns in the tribal areas to digital switches with
custom calling features in some parts of some cities.

	The great majority of the phones are rotary. The instruments
are either old 500 style sets, locally made, or the more modern
instruments are clones of the German desk sets currently made by
Siemens and Haganuk in Germany. The phones in Pakistan said "Made in
Pakistan" on them, so I assume they are made under license. They come
either with a rotary dial or push to pulse pad with the # (Octothorpe)
being used for "Last Number Dialed" (LND).

	According to the phone book, some areas have custom calling
features available, but they explain that you need a special
instrument -- they must mean Touch Tone as the instructions mention
using the * and # keys.

	Direct long distance dialling is a recent innovation in
Pakistan. Also some COs (no doubt the digital ones with custom
calling) have direct dial overseas calling. There is no itemised
billing.

	There are no phone booths, public calls are taken care of by
people setting up a phone in a store front called a "PCO" (Public Call
Office). I never used one of these, as the system worked so poorly, it
wasn't worth bothering.

	Some rural phones use radio links. The COs have forests of
horizontal Yagi antennas on them. They connect to rural phones that
operate in a similar manner to the old IMTS mobile phone system. The
frequencies in use vary between 148.00 and 162.00 Mhz.

	Obtaining a phone requires "connections". The phone book
drones on about how hard it is to install a phone and how it isn't
always possible, etc. The usual telco monopoly drivel. But no worry,
politicians are given a phone line quota. So they can hand out phone
assignments as political favours. The Pakistan Phone company recently
increased the quota -- yes, this is all above board and official.

	The quality of connections is abyssmal. If your call does
complete -- maybe 50% just do nothing -- and if the connection is not
a wrong number, it may be so noisy and weak that you have to hang up
and try again. Do you get credit for poor and wrong connections? Hell
no, if you did, they would have to fix the problem or go broke. Calls
are always at low levels, even across town. In the same CO, the calls
often seem to be poorly terminated. It would appear that they use too
few repeaters and then screw the gain too high. The level is always
low and often when you pick up a ringing phone it just sings (feed
back whistle). The level of crosstalk is fierce.

It is not unusual to have three or four conversations on your line. It
is also not unusual to have the crosstalk louder than the party you
are paying to shout at.

	The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad (Their nation's capital) has
rotary (ITT WECO) 1A2 all over. Works fine around the embassy. But
outside calls are like everywhere else, so weak that if someone is
talking in the same room, you have to ask them to be quiet so you can
hear your call. I offered to ship them all my old rotary 1A2, but they
declined.

	Offices in Pakistan use a locally built PBX. It has three
trunks and 20 extenstions. It is rotary only. Simple 0/1 toll
restriction is possible.  I saw newspaper ads for Siemens PBXs, but I
never saw one installed. Most people who need access to more than one
line use the Russian solution, rows of single line instruments on one
desk. A travel agent in Islamabad had five single line instruments on his
desk.

	Drops to houses and offices are strung across roofs and
through trees in a haphazard manner. The U.S. Consulate in Peshawar
has its phone lines dangling six feet above the sidewalk -- really
secure. The drop wires all seem to be spliced at 20 feet intervals --
maybe the wire is supplied in short lengths. The splices are simple
twists and uninsulated.

	The telco craft types use a locally built butt set. It does not
have aligator clips on the wire leads, just bare wire. Connections are
either wire wrap or screw terminals. I saw no punch down stuff.

	In short, this is a system that is unusable. A textbook
example of how not to put together a phone network. Seeing as a
reliable phone system is essential to commerce, you wonder why they
don't fix the phone system. But several U.S. phone companies are
interested in buying the Paki phone system. AT&T and some RBOCS have
expressed interest according to the Pakistani newspapers. Looking at
their outside plant, I would say that any company that buys it would
have to rip it all out and start again.


Julian Macassey, julian@bongo.info.com  N6ARE@K6VE.#SOCAL.CA.USA.NA
742 1/2 North Hayworth Avenue Hollywood CA 90046-7142 voice (213) 653-4495


[Moderator's Note: I believe in a message yesterday it was noted the
name of the telco there is 'PakTel'. And as Higdon would say, when the
Pakistani telco started a subsidiary here in the USA they wanted it to have
the same name as the parent company.  :)   PAT]

From: Julian Macassey <julian%bongo.UUCP@nosc.mil>
Subject: Afghan Phones
Date: 30 Jul 91 18:49:27 GMT
Reply-To: Julian Macassey <julian@bongo.info.com>
Organization: The Hole in the Wall  Hollywood California U.S.A.

	If you think the phone system is bad in Pakistan, try the
Afghan system. They don't have one. I believe the phones in Kabul
still work, but as the commies hold Kabul, I didn't go there.

	Before the Ruskie invasion and uncivil war, there were some
stats available on the phone system. Louis Dupree in his book on
Afghanistan said the switching equipment was Czech. An Afghan who
attended the telecom school there told me the switching equipment was
German (Siemens). At best, there were never more than 75,000 lines in
Afghanistan. Most of those lines were in Kabul (Their nation's
capital). According to a refugee who used to be a ministerial heavy in
Kabul, about the only lines going out to the provinces, were the ones
going to government offices in provincial towns.

	What is left today? Outside the recently liberated town of
Khost I saw one telephone pole. It did not have any wires attached to
it. If you want to communicate in Afghanistan, you get on a donkey.
But in the old days, they only people that used telephones were
government dweebs. Therefore there is little incentive to want phones
again. The regular folks never used 'em and the government just
collected taxes and conscripted young men.

	The only working phone line I saw in Afghanistan was across a
hill used to connect a mujahedin field telephone.

	There are no roads left and no electricity in the provinces.
So if you want to know what it was like in the 11th century, go to
Afghanistan.


Julian Macassey, julian@bongo.info.com  N6ARE@K6VE.#SOCAL.CA.USA.NA
742 1/2 North Hayworth Avenue Hollywood CA 90046-7142 voice (213) 653-4495