Can 5G save Pakistan's economy?

सालों, कपितिना सालों, welcome back to another episode of talk behind. Thanks, आज हमारे सामा जूद हैं. तीन बहुत ही ख़ास मेहमान. So recently if you guys remember we had a conversation with आमिर इब्राहिम from Jazz जिन्होंने हमें जिनसे हमने 5G के बारे में पुछा था और बड़ा उन्होंने insight दी थी कि you know Pakistan में 5G की असुरत है हाल है, किस तरफ़ situation जा रही है and whether we're gonna see 5G coming to Pakistan anytime soon. And for that, we thought we'd just create a panel, and we have some very exciting guests for you today. For starters, we have, Yang Gu, who's the brand director of OPPO South Asia. We also have, brother Kushnu, who's the chairman of Pasha. He's going to be representing the software industry side of things and and just sort of some of the policy side of things. We also have Akram Ali, who's the head of business at business development at Pro Pakistani. If you guys remember, Pro Pakistani was the, I I guess, the only outlet that aggressively covered the three g, four g launch in Pakistan as well. They have a huge, long pedigree of, you know, covering tech and telecom in Pakistan. So we'd love to hear more about, you know, where the government's at, where the telcos at. Just some of the insight on where five g is is is at right now in Pakistan. But, thank you so much, to all the guests for being part the show. Thank you very much for inviting us. Thank you so much. Yang, I'm gonna start with you just sort of trying to understand a little bit about your life before OPPO and, you know, how you ended up here in Pakistan.

Okay. So, previously, I started my career in China. So, I was in advertisement, digital marketing, and public relationship back in China. And then I moved to Eastern Europe region for OPOL PR manager role.

So, and then I decided to shift here in Pakistan because I'm, you know, really pretty much fond of the market, fond of the people here. That's why I moved. And how long have you been in Pakistan? One year. How do you like it so far? I love it. Really? Yeah. And you're based out of Lahore? Yep. In Lahore. Awesome. Awesome. Tell me a little bit about Oppo because I understand it's now the top four

global manufacturers of smartphones essentially, right? Yeah, we are among the top four because smartphone industry is kind of very competitive. The market, you know, fluctuates sometimes. But we are, like, recent

years we are, like, steadily among the top four smartphone brands. And so, so when it did start? How did it evolve into, you know, the top four? Interesting

fact is that, like, OPPO started in China, like, back in 2004. Right. A very interesting fact is, like, you know, when we first start, we were actually, you know, doing MPC player back in China. So, actually we have a long history of researching into audio like that. And previously we were, you know, one of, like, our Blu Ray player actually was one of the top in the European market. Right. So, you know, like, here people feels like Oppo sells smartphone for sure. But actually, we're not only a smartphone company. We are a technology company. So, we have, you know, very deep research and development strengths in a lot of fields like I mentioned audio. And also, right now today we're going to talk about five gs and also imaging technology, design,

and also charging technology. Right. And and what about Pakistan? So when did you guys launch in Pakistan? And I know for a fact now that OPPO is one of the leading brands in Pakistan as well. Yeah. So, that's that's complicated and difficult, right? Because the Pakistani market tends to stick to the brands that they've known for for the longest time, and they have that trust there as well. So how did you manage to, sort of capture that market and and and, you know, have popper here? Uh-huh. We came here relatively

early. We were here, like, first in 2014, like, ten years after we born. So we just choose Pakistan and we enter here like way before we enter the other market like Europe. Right. So we started here, you know, like we first brought our product here to test the water. The first device we, you know, received very good response is the F Series. Right. Because, you know, F Series was known as a selfie expert. And somehow, you know, our strengths, like, somehow match the market because people here, like, we can see that they like taking photos, they like taking selfies, they are pretty much fond of partying and, you know, connect with each other. So, that's why, you know, our F Series got quite good respond

in the first place. And then later we started to bring renal series as well and more, like, very exciting technology kind of product here. Right. And you guys, I I if I remember this correctly, early on you guys launched more of the higher end versions with, like, these exclusive camera features, but then you eventually went into the more affordable markets as well. If I were to ask you, you know, what's the biggest sell in Pakistan? Is it the, you know, the selfie sort of higher end versions or is it the more, you know, consumer, like pocket friendly, affordable consumer models?

Okay. So, like, when we see the market here, actually, the market here is huge like we have a huge population here. For Opel like you know what we are doing right now because we always produce like higher quality device and we spend a lot of time and effort into researching the technology that we are really good at. So, for us, we have a wide range of technology products, but we mostly target the young people for, like, without F Series product. And also, who are fond of professional photography and videography with our renal product. Right.

Tell me a little bit about some of the exciting things. You mentioned research and development. Right? And I know that you guys are working on some very exciting new tech as well. So what's coming up with OPPO? And are we going to see some of those newer products? Because we tend to hear, I mean, I I go on a pro-pakistani blog and I hear about this new projector or something coming up and I find out it's only in China or somewhere else in the world. Can you tell us some of the things, exciting things that are coming up and whether we'll be seeing them in Pakistan as well? Mhmm. So, last year, actually, we have, globally, we have introduced our first

foldable phone. Mhmm. So, basically, this foldable phone, we call it Oppo Find N. It's really beautiful in terms of screen. So it has, like, very less you can see, like, it's flat overall. So it gives you a more, like, beautiful kind of visual feel.

Yeah. And this has a main screen over here and then there's a main four little bit screen. Yeah. And in terms of size,

it's like a kind of like golden ratio because, like, when you fold it, it's very easy to hold on your hand. And when you unfold it, you know, like... Yes, very meaningless. It's not... I mean, most of the follower phones seem like a mini laptop in your hand, they're actually pretty pretty nifty. Yeah, very cool, handy. Because, like, Oppo, we are pretty much into design. And apart from that, we're also, you know, like, doing our IoT ecosystem. So we have been introducing our AI glass. It's actually not the first air glass that we are introducing, but it is the one which is really close to commercialization. So as you can see, like normally the air glass is very huge, covering the your home face, you can't go out with it. But this air glass is very light and it attaches Oh, it's modular essentially. Yes, it attaches to the glass very easily and it can achieve certain features like business wise. It can achieve like translation, real time translation. It can also help you to do like lectures, give a speech because it shows a screen, and it can easily connect to your smartphone or your watches, smart watches. So when you're doing exercise, you can see your, you know, data, your health figures very easily. And so there's a screen on that

glass? Can I see that? Sure. Oh, wow. So there's an actual screen over here. And so essentially, can throw anything from there to here?

Right now, the features are, you know, still conceptual. So, back in China, you can do, like, map navigation like that.

Overseas, like, actually, right now, it's more of a business kind of feature. And, you know, your basic, like, location and house data, like that. And so, when you talk about real time translation, for example, is that the phone that's taking the audio and translating that and pushing it on the glasses?

Our direction is actually if you have two airglasses, you can do the real time translate. For instance, you speak voodoo, I speak English. Eventually, what we want to achieve is that when we look at each other, we can see the translation real time directly on the mini screen. Right. Without having to connect it to the smartphone? No. Like, you you have to connect to your smartphone, but still, like, you can translate between the Yeah. Air glass. Like, you can communicate. That's that's pretty amazing. And is this essentially using high speed, like, five g Internet to to achieve these things? Yes. Yes. It requires faster network.

Understandably. And speaking of faster network, I'm going to now, you know, move to weather. First of all, thank you for being part of the show, and, you know, great to have you back. I mean, you had the longest chat on this show with Bader. Two hours thirty minutes the last time you're just reminding us. The last time we started recording at twelve and he ended up at two, 02:30.

So, you for that. Somebody even yesterday told me that I just listened to your podcast and my question was, did you listen to the whole thing? And he said, yes, the whole two hours. Seven, people do listen. Yeah, people do listen. So, thank you so much. So, brother, tell me a little bit about you know, where is the software industry at? And and and, you know, when it when it comes to high speed Internet and and broadband Internet,

I mean, what can we potentially see? What can we dream in terms of five g? And also, one thing I'd like to understand, when we talk about five gs, is this wireless broadband that we're talking about? Or because, we do, I believe, have higher speeds on fiber. So so is there a use case for wireless for the industry?

So, thank you so much and, Yang, welcome to Pakistan. If you don't mind, I'll keep it a little bilingual so that everyone can benefit from our audience as well. So, Muzumel, what is happening is that the software industry in Pakistan is growing in two different directions. Both in the good directions, by the way. One is the local digital transformation, which is where the pure IT tech companies are helping non tech sectors like agriculture, fisheries, textile, whatever you can think of. And the other is pure software development where these companies are exporting either products or services purely out of Pakistan. Both sectors are growing rapidly. Right. And I think COVID really accelerated that part because all those digital wants now became needs. Right. And we're talking we're looking at maybe, let's let's say, Panda or Creams of the World and all those From ecommerce to any enabled service. Absolutely. Fintech, you think you name it. And it's even gaming. Gaming is, in Pakistan, in the last few years, have really improved, both digital gaming, and you see a lot of interest both in game development and even game playing. And people are realizing that it's a paper game. So they're realizing that it's a monetizable Yeah, it's an industry essentially. Absolutely. So it's a global industry and we can actually be a part of that as well. So I think from a Pakistan perspective, Pakistan is growing in both directions. All our traditional sectors need to be transformed digitally Hence, IT, both hardware, software, and even connectivity as an infrastructure has to be there. And the other is, of course, the exports part. But remember, especially for exports, we need to do a lot of R and D. Right. And for R and D, because the developers have to be ahead of the consumers. Right. Of course, they need to do R and D, they need to develop products, they need to productize, as Yang was mentioning, they need to commercialize products from a concept to a commercialization part. So hence, we need fundamental infrastructure as software development industry. We need infrastructure before an end consumer would need it eventually. Right. Because we need to develop products based on that. So as you asked, I think this is more like wireless connectivity, but at scale. Right. So I think some of the benefits five gs will certainly have is, of course, speed is certainly there. But I think the more important thing is the latency part. I think that's where five gs really grows big, that it will have a near real time connectivity. Right? I think we'll talk about the use cases later on that. But the other thing is that, you know, the current networks get stuck up when there's large volume of data or connectivity or users connected to the same system. I think that's where five gs will again be sorting those out. So I think five gs will, and, you know, the most important thing is five gs is going to be consuming far less power. Right. So I think overall, we need to develop use cases. We need to develop new products and services which may not be in demand right now. End user may not know what they really need, but I think we need to understand their challenges and then come up with use cases which can be leveraged through newer technologies. So I think this is where Pakistan has evolved from CDMA to GSM to four gs. And of course, we need to migrate to the best technologies faster and quicker. I think we need to leapfrog. We need to move faster. Our economy needs more and and, you know, we are a young population. So we are a more connected power. As as Yang earlier mentioned, we are a very strong youth based population.

And I think we have an opportunity to not only give them the development options but also the usage options as well. I think one of the most insightful things that you just mentioned and I was speaking to परवेद ज़बासी yesterday, you know, and he mentioned his experience with MobileZone and how back in early 2000s Pakistan was one of the I mean Pakistan was actually far ahead of the region. Correct. In terms of launching cell phones and he mentioned that Mobile Zone was actually selling all the cell phones in Afghanistan and Bangladesh and a lot of these countries where, who hadn't jumped onto the telecom bandwagon. And then somewhere down the line, I mean, even with three gs, four gs, were But very I think that's when we migrated to GSM

far earlier than the rest of the world. Right. I remember back then traveling to The US and I realized that they were still on CDMA and Pakistan was on GSM. So it was more like we were more advanced and that's absolutely was true. And I think that's where our tele density grew rapidly as well. Right.

And so, I mean, it's it's it's thing to really think about the consumer side of things. Okay. You know, how many people are gonna use five g? And and when you're looking at the economics of it, it's also also important to look at the big picture because earlier you mentioned, you know, for a lot of these exporters who, by the way, are bringing in the dollars that we so direly need every few years, maybe the the unit economics might not make make sense in the government perspective Correct. With the consumer, but it would definitely make sense in terms of the larger economy and the dollar inflow that we can potentially tap into. So that's, yeah, that's a new direction altogether. Akram, you've been covering this for for a while now, and I know that Pro Pakistani was is is, you know, historically been very aggressively looking at this industry. Tell me a little bit about first of all your yourself and and, you know, how you ended up being in प्रोपाक्ष्टानी and being in this industry. Thank you so much for having me. I always wanted to come on your show but finally I got the invite.

So, I started working in Pro Pakistani back in 2015. I used to work for a for a store like it we used to sell these online merchants, merchandise like Nike, Adidas and I used to work on Amazon. So, I used to handle the storefront. So, I have a digital marketing expertise and I worked there for like six years. Right. And it's because I am a tech lover and that's why at Pro Pakistani apart from the business development thing, I do the tech reviews and it's my hobby. Right. Because when I when I started using computer, was a Pentium four era and since then things have been evolving and I am loving them in because I believe that the updated model has better things as compared to the previous one. So coming back to Pro Pakistani like I when I started working at Pro Pakistani we were just like five ten people working from home and there was no office. So I used to tell these guys that you know I am married I cannot work from home so let's get an office. So we got an office and then अलहम्दुलाह now we are more than 90 to 100 people. Really? Yeah, so-so tech sector coverage is-is very extensive that I can tell you something that telcos guys like they call me and confirm the news. Where did, where did you get it from? And I like, I don't know reporters are magicians here because they don't, they don't tell us the sources and all. So, प्रोर पाक्षानी has been there since 2008. Right. And आमिर भाई started it on his own and he he was telling us all these stories that he was sitting and he booked a domain name and he didn't know what to do with it and then eventually it became this. Right. So, this is like the whole journey of myself and पूर्वक सानी. Awesome and tell me a little bit about what's happening on the five g front. You know, where do we see the government act? Where do we see the telecom sector act? Alright. So, government side is more of like they are all set to launch it. All they have to do is hire a consultant and set the minimum bid price. Other than that, they are all good to go. It was supposed to happen in March 2023 but political instability has caused delays and this was said by IT minister by the way. Am not like, I am quoting him. Right, so 2023 means next year. Yeah, next year but now it might happen in the licensing might happen in, you know, June or July. Right. Like maybe even Q3 like. So, these are the reports as far as the government is concerned. Telcos on the other hand, they so, you know, for the global five g rollout, you need to have 70% of four g users. In Pakistan, we have 42%. Right. Also, you have to upgrade your infrastructure

a lot. When you when you say 42%, is that, like, 42%

of all mobile data users or is is four g, yeah. Four g adoption of all mobile data users percentage. Like, let's say if there are 100 people, 70 should be using four g, but in Pakistan there are 42 using four g. So global standards are like 70%. So on the other side like it needs a lot of investments and costings for telcos to have those ground preparations and to meet the benchmark levels, you know. So-so on this side I mean there are still like a lot of work to do. बाकी brother भाई is here. He can, you know, tell you about what's going on. I remember, sorry,

अख्रम अगर आपको उसके बारे में पता हो कि there was a test as well I believe. I was there. Yeah. And so I was there in that test. So it was in controlled environment. Okay. And and and who did that? Was that Zhong or what? Zhong. It was Zhong. Yeah. And, what was the test about? It was about five g speed test. Okay. So they actually added, like, one of the towers and tested

five gs. Yeah. Was at their, if I remember it correctly, it was at their office. Mhmm. And they did it and they they did quite well because it was like in controlled environment, tested and everything. So so it was good. Yeah. I I witnessed it. And when was that? I think

one and a half or two years back. Gotcha. So that I mean, it's been a long Yeah. It's been a long But then, tell me a little bit about again, so so the Akra mentioned the government side of things, and they have, a general plan, and they're going ahead with that plan. But then really the point of contention is at the telco site, right? And there are two areas where the problem really lies. One is the cost of license itself which is a very huge upfront cost And you really need to have the right business model to be able to get that out. And the second is the infrastructure cost. And I do understand when you have a license that is in dollars, with the current way that the economy is flowing, a lot of companies will be very wary of really making new investments in Pakistan until things stabilize for the time being. But also when it comes to the logistics of it, if I understand this correctly, I think the coverage area of five g towers is actually much less. You have to add a whole lot more towers. Correct. So I'm assuming that That mesh has to be larger. Mesh has to be larger. And so I'm assuming the cost of infrastructure would be higher as well. Does that really mean, I mean, so it seems to me based on that conclusion that it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to be even thinking about five gs right now. Absolutely, Mizumel. I think there are challenges. I think with every new technology, especially at this scale

in an emerging market, there are always challenges. But I think we need to have a long term vision here. I think that's where the government needs to think more pragmatically and work with commercial businesses, of course, telcos and hardware providers and everyone. Maybe, I think this is exactly what we are thinking about the blockchains and the cryptos and all of those. I think all of these technologies have a, they're more like a double edged sword. Right. And the government needs to probably bring together the specialists on a table, have a strategic dialogue, and come up with a solution on how best to sort this out. We I mean, there's no question that we won't need it. There's no question that we will not have it. The question is how soon can we get it? How soon can we be better than other emerging markets so that we can not only develop products in advance and then leapfrog and then develop solutions for the of the world based on these technologies. So it's totally up to us to take lead or be a follower again at some point in time. So I think it's better to take lead. Our economy really needs better technologies. And again, I go back to the fact the reason we need more technologies is that we have a very young youth bulge population. And I think they are more tech savvy. They are digital natives. We do not have an aging population. So hence, we need to bring more and better technologies, faster and better technologies to Pakistan. And we of course need to weigh in the pros and cons. I mean, I'm not saying that we should just go ahead blindly, but we need to bring all the stakeholders to table, create an emergency, set the targets, and start maybe even figure out if there are better ways on licensing as well. Okay. What would that mean? I'll give you an example. So, in technology, one of our suggestions is that to create special technology zones. Right. And I think there could be another option that those zones can at least be five gs connected to Right. Start So, at least the business side of things Absolutely. Begin to, So that before it gets to the consumerism part, we need to get to the productization and the commercialization and R and D part to be done here as well. That we need to develop local apps, local content, everything which is more use case based on these new technologies. So I think, by the way, Ministry of IT has been super progressive, a lot of things, Ministry of Commerce has been super progressive. I think they both need to sit together and understand what are the challenges from a private sector perspective, And I'm sure they can find some creative ways to solve the licensing and the hardware

cost. Okay, this is interesting. What you essentially mentioned is like a, sort of like a sandbox environment test rollout where, okay, maybe even if you want to have like license for the mass market rollout before that you essentially define some zone and say, listen, test your things over here. The cost of logistics is less as well. It's a controlled environment and at least you can be able to give some of the business users the early access that's going to help the economy as well in the long run. Absolutely. And, you know, मुज़मिल,

I'm sure there's always an argument that, you know, people don't need it. My argument there is that people don't understand why they need it, number one. Number two, a lot of people don't really under so, I mean, take, for example, health tech. People wouldn't understand why they need the MRIs and the CT scans when there were x rays. Of course, because they're not medical specialists. So, of course, the industry has to take lead there and create use cases. Because people will then understand understand how they can benefit from such technologies. So I think it is our responsibility. It is government's responsibility representing the people of Pakistan to actually take leapfrogs and then find solutions so that we can solve our biggest challenges. Agri tech is a challenge right now. Are an agri based economy. Are a lot of our industries' productivity is far lower than global averages. So we need to improve there as well. We need a lot of IoTs and the ARs and the VRs part. So I think we have existing use cases which have been there incumbently, and we need to solve them. And I think we need better technologies for that. There's no question about that. Right. Yang,

brother was talking about some use cases, and I know that you guys are aggressively working on the consumer tech side of things and really, sort of activating a lot of those use cases. And I know that five g is a huge part of Oppo's, you know, future as well. Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing when it comes to five g and you also mentioned the augmented reality glasses and how, you know, some of these things actually require those high speed Internet rails for the consumers to be able to benefit from. So what does five g what does the five g future look like? If you just talk about the globe, to be honest, in at at the start. From Oppo's side, actually, we are, you know, like, researching in five gs into two directions. So first is we have a standardized team

particularly doing the five gs standardized work. Like they set the standards and they're particular, like they're participating in different market with the operators, with the technology companies, basically for, you know, testing out better technology for five g. For example, like, we have a five g lab with Aristote. So we have joined, you know, collaborating in terms of, like, five g slicing technology like that, and we are actively testing out in Europe. I think follow-up with Boda, like I just said, is that, actually when we see Europe, like Europe market in terms of general public, people are very conservative, you know, to tech new technology. There's a lot of controversial in terms of five g rollout like that. But it's still the duty of the industry to test the new technology out and, you know, push out the new things because we are more, you know, like, we can see more benefit, you know, more benefits from the industry side in the long run, right? Right. So, what we have been doing is in Europe, we were the first to introduce commercialized five gs form back then when the five gs assay network was tested. So, we were the first to introduce a commercialized five gs phone that was Reno five gs, I remember. Like back in 2019. Right. Yeah. So, and then we are also collaborating with Ericsson and Vodafone. We test out the first pre commercialized, like, five g network, SA network, in one of the university in UK. So we built this small scale network to test out how this network liked and to listen to the real users' feedback. Right. And also recently, what we have just done is, together with Qualcomm and Arison, we built another like, you know, enterprise level five gs slicing network again to test it out. Okay. So my understanding is that

the sort of boosters or the five g routers are being provided by Ericsson and you guys are providing the devices. Is that correct? We have a joint lab. So both of us, like, different,

you know, partners, we're providing our, you know, technology because five g slicing technology was from our end as well, actually. So we are joined we're doing, like, joint research and development for the five gs technology. And, of course, like, Oppo, we also have a lot of, like, basic technology, smart technology, let's say, from the device end. For instance, we have our Smart 5G. Like, we have invested a lot of efforts just to make the device smarter, and it can be easily connected to different type of operators' Right. And also we have like dual connectivity for instance, like it allows your five g device to connect to both five g and WiFi to provide like better speed, let's say, like 28%

actually, like, fast speed and lower power consumption as well. Right. And what do you think about Pakistan? I mean, do you think there is a real... I mean, we were talking earlier about Pakistan and and and launching five gs here. Do you think there's a real requirement or or potential for five gs in Pakistan? Of course.

I think Pakistan, like, the key obstacles is that, of course, like the four gs penetration and the investment. But still, if we look at the long run, actually because we have huge population and especially people here are so passionate of new technology, and we'll tend to be more open to what is coming next. So in my opinion, I think five g might be the next big changer, like game changer in Pakistan. Because right now we're, like, in a struggle, but we need something more to boost the vitality, let's say. So that's you know, that's the fascinating part of a new technology because it sometimes triggers the demand. It's not, oh, the demands came first and then the new technology comes, right? Right. Like sometimes it's like, the speed itself like change everything. So, for instance, when we look at ten years back, like, we can't imagine, like, you know, like, ten years back, we I believe, like, we're also in in the discussion of why we need four g, like, we already have five three g, we already have two g. Why why we need such speed? It's just a number. Right? But, now we are so getting used to smartphone. Previously, were using feature phone and we're enjoying this kind of Internet service, of course, due to COVID. But if we don't have four gs, maybe this type of service might not that easily be captured by the general users. So I think five gs actually opens a new future for us. We can't actually, it's also hard for me to tell what kind of service will come through, but it provides this kind of platform for the new technology to reach, like the startup or the enterprise, those people who has creativity,

who have visions to create new kind of service. And that type of service will change our life forever. 100%. And and globally, if I were to ask you, where where is the five g rollout standing right now? I mean, are there countries that have five g, I mean, actively available? Or are we still in the testing and and and sort of licensing phase? Some of countries are already available. Some European

countries, like, is already there. And China, like, is very aggressively building five g stations right now. And also, we are collaborating, like, when five g was quite new to China before, like, Oppo was also, you know, starting this kind of spark project with all of the operators so that we can test out the speed and also hear from the users, you know, their feedback on five g and what else we can do. So, this is basically what we're doing right now. And also, Korea also very aggressive on five g as well. So, UAE also. So, I believe, like, there are, you know, countries that are taking, like, step forward

to trying to capture this market. Makes sense, makes sense. Akram, if if I were to ask you, can you share some of the use cases pertaining to the Pakistani industry of what we could imagine, you know, a world with five g?

So, we cannot imagine. I mean, because I have seen a lot of real use cases. I must confess that I also had a very limited scope of five gs in my mind, though I am a part of तोपक सानी but trust me, I had a very limited scope of five gs. Yeah, because I mean when I think five gs I just think faster YouTube videos, right? That's it, yeah. I am a user perspective, that's it. But I went to a conference in China and I have seen a lot of use cases. So first of all being a journalist, we need DSNGs and a lot of expensive equipment to get things done, to get the live coverage. Right. There was a five G backpack which I wore and it was all good to go because late in Let's see entire van into a backpack. Into a backpack and I understood it so well that they took me in ad of that product. Right. By the way, so other than this I I have seen robotic arms. They were, you know, picking up trash and they used to work for twenty four hours non stop and they differentiate the the, you know, things like cans in the separate bin and papers in the separate bin, so stuff like that. Also, there were drone cameras. You must have heard about drone cameras recognizing people, but it was more than that. So, they used to recognize your facial expressions, either you are a criminal or not. Interesting. So, they they are using tech to get to the thieves Also in simple there were these drone cameras which used to identify the issues at grid stations and electric poles where human lives were in danger because you know when you get to a pole then health and safety concerns are there. So they used to identify that issue and then send the teams to rectify them. So when it comes to Pakistan, I mean I have seen a surgeon performing surgery remotely sitting in his own house through robotic arms. So, in Pakistan this is a big issue that you need to call the surgeon. We are blessed. We live in Islamabad, Karachi. When my father had this heart attack, the surgeon was there like in ten minutes. Right. But in remote and rural areas, this is a And concerning 40 of our population is in rural areas. Yeah. And this is a big problem and we need to get 5G ASAP like Yang said that it could be a big game changing boost for Pakistan's economy because you see these little internet based companies like करीम and Uber which were being taken as non serious businesses but they are contributing a lot in Pakistan's economy. Right. So, बदिबाही is here. A lot of internet companies have become big things and five g, if five g is there, all their limitations will be removed and they can perform miracles in the field. Right. So these are the some of the use cases I mentioned. I've seen them personally. Yeah. And they can bring a lot of change. Yeah, 100%.

By the way, I think one of the one of the interesting things that Yang mentioned and that really opened my mind was maybe we whatever use cases that we're thinking, maybe a lot of the future we don't even know yet. I think when I really look at four g and evolution of that, I think for most part she's right. At the time you were like, why do we really need four g? Right? And and and the fact is, immediately after that, the entire because the world was at at four g, the videos were higher, higher quality. The the the transfer speeds were higher, so the storage was higher, the processing was higher. And so some of the, actually some of the basic things that we used to interact with had become so enriched with data that, you know, our conventional phones weren't enough for them. And so I think you mentioned earlier of leapfrogging. I think leapfrogging is a nice to have for a developing country. For me, I think we're going to lose if we don't have the right technology at the right time. I mean, we look at the IT industry, right? And every single time we have, I mean, I've had I've had so many discussions. We had the discussion with you as well, but so many people and every person tells me about the nineties and how we were right at the cusp of, you know, really being a part of it. And then we saw Philippines and India and Indonesia and, you know, all of these countries literally overtaking us by miles. And now we're just sitting here sad thinking about how we can increase a, potential industry. And and and, really, it's about the job creation for me. Yeah. So, can you tell tell me some of the commercial use cases and and and and, really, how do we convince? Because I do understand the problem. You mentioned earlier, The the the money problem is is is really there. And and, for example, you mentioned that, you know, maybe we could have these sort of pocket zones or sandbox environments. But then even after the after that, maybe if you're still gonna wait for the demand, it's never gonna happen. Right? And so maybe there is a different model where if I think about it as a data consultant, I used to work at this company that used to provide data solutions. And I remember for an average solution to a company would be a million dollars. And then these cloud companies started coming in and they started offering these sort of pay as you grow service. Correct. Right? Then and so many people, it was just a very simple way to solve their problem. And those companies, in the start everybody was like, oh, you know, even when you're going go for a pay as you grow, you're not going to make as much money. Let's just get money upfront. But the fact is in its eventuality, you actually end up making more money. Right. So, can we have a potential solution like that?

So, Muzambil, I want to add actually a couple of things to the conversation which Yang just talked about, the challenge in Pakistan and why we really need it. So recently at Parsha, we did a research with Google, and it's available online, by the title of Unlocking Pakistan's Digital Potential. It was a few months exercise. We, we did hire professional economists and statisticians in Singapore, with Google, and we did a full blown study. And, actually, we launched it with the president of Pakistan. That study concluded that if Pakistan deploys edge technologies in their traditional sectors, in our traditional sectors like agri tech and and and, textiles and all of those, Pakistan can create a new economy of $60,000,000,000 every year. Every year? Every year. It's an annual new economy of 60 It's billion 20 of

your total GDP every year. Correct.

And that what we need to do is bring technologies like AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, ML, IoTs. I'll stop at IoT. Just one use case of IoT is a super important business use case. All of our manufacturing needs to be digitized as well. Right now, our inefficiencies are far more higher. Our productions are not efficient. Similarly, our productivity in agri sector is far lower than our regional and global competitors. So we need to improve sensors there. We need to bring connectivity there. All of that is just five gs. You can't do it on four gs. There's a limitation on number of devices. There's a limitation on power consumption. There's a limitation on data speeds. So there are tons of reasons which professionals would understand that we already need something better than four gs. That's five gs, of course. And of course, there'll be R and Ds. There'll be new technologies coming in and all of those things. But I think there's a huge opportunity for Pakistan to leapfrog not only in actually adopting new technology, but implementing that into our traditional sectors and growing and improving our sectors there. Just imagine if we improve 50% of our textile production, if we improve 50% of our agriculture output, if we introduce new agriculture products there, if we grow new kinds of seeds, all of those needs better technology. That's exactly where we need it. And I think the most important thing is we need to understand with every new technology, the first use case is entertainment, as you mentioned. Your mindset was four gs means faster YouTube. Yeah. Absolutely true. Yeah. With every new technology, the first use case is entertainment. Right. And people will experiment. People will play around with it. Once they get used to it, they'll jump onto what else can I do with it? And now people are doing Amazon's freelancing, tons of other things. So just imagine that with four gs deployment across Pakistan, you have more freelancers working across Pakistan. Yeah. Because they're connected better to the world. They can offer their services sitting in within their four walls, within their homes, especially girls and women who, for many reasons, can't really go out, can still deliver and add to the economy in dollar value, which, as you mentioned, we already need very desperately. And hence, I think there's no confusion that we need better technologies. However, we need better policies with that. We need pros and cons to be in. We want the government to find resolutions. And I think, in addition to what I earlier said as special technology zones where we can have the business use cases, I think we need to create experience zones for consumers as well. Maybe blue area in Islamabad, maybe Mall Road or yeah. Maybe we need to digitize them first, create five and give them free licensing to two or three or all operators so that they can create use cases. They can let users experience five gs, businesses experience five gs. And once they will experience it, it's a freemium model with all gaming, with all apps, everything. And once you'll see that everything is kind of centered around those areas, then you can start scaling it up. Think that's where the government needs to be more lenient, needs to really go back to the table, figure out more creative ways on how best they can get the licensing fee. Is an upfront licensing fee the best way? Shouldn't, I mean, just a very loud, bold question would be, shouldn't the government be subsidizing this so that eventually the larger economy will benefit and we'll have a larger pie to earn from it? Yeah. Rather than just be a bottleneck as a licensing fee think. Yeah. So I think we need to really think through and have a very pragmatic discussion around it. Yeah. And especially when it's a it's an export based industry, I think. Yeah. You know, I mean And sorry to interrupt. So very important thing what you just mentioned. Our fastest growing exports is services exports. Yeah. And that's where again, it's all about services. About connectivity. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. Whether you're offering management consulting, accounting outsourcing, software development, whatever it is. Yeah. Even virtual tourism in case of COVIDs and those scenarios, I think give all the opportunity to

suit. I mean, there's no no reason we don't need better technology. Yeah. And I think when we when we talk about exports, a lot of times we're just focusing on sort of your conventional brick and mortar industrial exports. And the fact is that's a lot of CapEx and that's also a lot of it's very incremental. And so if you want to look at 100,000,000 less than 30 year olds getting into the job market over the next decade or so,

you can't absorb them through your conventional means. And मुज़मिन, sorry for interrupting you over and over again. This is an other important thing. Services and especially IT services is the only highest trade surplus exports, Which means you don't need to import much. Just need, you just, you have the main ingredient which is the human resource, which is the talent. You already have it in Pakistan. The only next ingredient they need is a laptop and a connectivity. And that's it. And they're all going to contribute to the economy if we provide them better laptops, better machines and better connectivity. Yeah. And they all will become actually a democratized economy where people can contribute positively and and the the point of joblessness will actually not remain there. Yeah. Because people can become better entrepreneurs, better startups, existing companies will be able to produce better and non tech sectors will also be able to perform better. So I think there's

a very less downside it. 100%. And actually, was very a very interesting use case. I was reading up on on five g was there the future of jobs is actually changing as well. And and and while we talk about these technical roles and skill based roles like IT, there's a huge, incoming growth of personal assistance Yeah. Personal I mean, I was actually there's was there's one job, called, personal shopper, that shops for people Yeah. Because they're so busy and and and because of the population demographic mismatch between the Western world and the and and sort of the global South, there are huge incredible opportunities coming up and particularly in the, Web three point o era. Again, I I feel like we haven't even touched web three point o, in this conversation because the fact is the world is going to really radically change over the next three to four years. And that's where the demand job job, you know, but what we've been missing. Okay. Maybe we don't need five g, but web three point o is going to change, radically change all of that, right? So, just digital tourism, virtual tourism alone. Yeah.

Assume another COVID, another epidemic and you can, you know, even Airbnb, companies like Airbnb launched Airbnb virtual tourism, virtual. So, I mean, I think, and I I mean, I know someone who told me from The US, a Pakistani, he called me and he said, you know what I did? I took a virtual tour of the Pyramids in the Egypt and I hired a virtual tourist, a virtual guide who was live on his phone.

And GoPro and

he took us wherever he wanted to and he and he was like their virtual assistant in on Just virtual imagine Dupuksen doing it in Hondsa, Gelge and Northern, even Makkali in South, in Punjab. I mean, I think there's so much opportunity on how better connectivity with less energy consumption and more stable connectivity, actually with low latency, can be really useful. Healths, as he, as Akram just mentioned, was, was just a very simple use case. We don't have telemedicine operating yet in Parkinson at scale. And, you know, startups like SehedKahani, what they're doing is they're delivering healthcare to the marginalized communities. And if we can just help them go beyond just clinical advice to actually doing procedures with five gs low latency connectivity, I think that's just one simple use case from a B2C consumer perspective perspective. 100%,

100%. There's no con question. We recently had a conversation with Fahmdar. If you guys can check that out as well, it's on, on, on the show. And, do you, do you know Fahmdar? Yeah, they just raised a Absolutely. I mean, I was, my mind was blown by what these guys were doing. They because Pakistan has one of the lowest, you know, per per acre yield for farms. And and so these guys were basically, they're using satellite imagery to tell you exactly whether your plants need water or not, whether your soil has nitrogen or not. They're doing all of that real time, of cost for farmers anywhere in Pakistan. That was just like, it was the tip of the iceberg Because, first of all, there's a huge impending food crisis coming in globally, not just in Pakistan. We aggressively need to, you know, feed a growing population. And the fact is that until and unless we radically use these technologies to change, you know, the the the the way that we're farming, we're not gonna keep up. And so, really, when I was talking to him, he was talking about, you know, okay. So we're we're using primarily satellites because using drones is complicated and so on and so forth. And suddenly now when earlier we were talking about agri tech and stuff like that. I just realized you don't even need to have like a huge base on ground. You just need autonomous drones that fly out, take the, give you a closer look of those farms, those plants, all of that data and then transfer that data and all of that high quality image data that's being transmitted cannot happen on four g. Yeah. You need five g for that. Yeah. You need that real time analytics happening

and and so that's a very real I mean, that's a use case sir जो कि बेटा minimum like. गली गली पर पहुंच रहे हैं ना? Absolutely and you know, all our villages are all agri based. Everything is agri based. So, we need, you know, we are importing wheat. Yeah. Because we are not improving on our productivity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, so we need to really improve much faster as you said. We are actually, I would say, I think this is an opportunity for the likes of Oppo to actually start doing R and D with our universities, bring the likes of Ericsson and everyone to our universities, do R and D. Actually, I think we need our policymakers to actually create space for R and D to start with. And then some zones, experience zones for consumers and for businesses, technology zones where they can develop products and services around it. I think then scale it out slowly and gradually, but I think there's no question we don't need it. We need to really, it's not just about refrogging, it's about

life and death for us probably. Yeah, 100%, 100%. Glad I'm going to wrap this up, I'm going ask a question that I generally ask all my guests. He's already answered it before, but I'm gonna ask it in a different way so he can join in as well. You know, if there if if, let's say, we have a, a five g rollout, the way that we sort of envision and are dreaming of, how do you imagine Pakistan of 2050? You know, what what could what could the world look like with with the digital really happening the way that we expected? Yang, I'm gonna start with you. I I really hope, like, you know, for instance, when I look at China right now,

I can see that a lot of people actually previously there were also struggle to turn to five gs like China like you know right now we are building a lot of station but operators is still trying to educate like when people accept five gs and you know five g penetration grow more. I'm really hope like you know Pakistan in the 2015 can you know somehow be more open and step even far more ahead because I can see huge potential here whenever, you know, for instance recently we have launched our five g in the mid range in the F Series, F21 Pro five g. We see huge, you know, like comments on social media. Even before we launching the five gs is people want five gs here. So, I hope this kind of, you know, scenario will happen and even maybe in 2015, you know, there's a lot of new scenes originally from Pakistan

and not from the other parts of the world. Makes sense. Akram, what do you think? I'm a traveler and I miss connectivity a lot when I travel to this गिलगीत हुंजा side. But I'm about to travel to Europe and I'm all happy and excited because I can be connected with my team. So my personal perspective is if Pakistan gets a five g, my kids can go to any place without any tension because they know they are connected and so also this could boost industry and individualism a lot like everyone will grow and Pakistan will become a great place. I mean, I'm really positive about this. Bye bye bye.

I think, you know, very simple thing is for from a Pakistan perspective, we have very simple goals. We need to be economically stable. We need to be economically sustainable. We need to be actually a country where foreign direct investment is encouraged. We need to be a country where we need to not just export raw materials like the cottons, but also not only raw talent, but rather more value added things. I think we are left behind. I'll just give you a quick small example how far behind we are right now. Singapore is half of by size. Singapore is also half of Lahore by population. It's just 5,000,000 people. Their exports per year is $370,000,000,000, over $370,000,000,000. Pakistan's exports per year is around $2,426,000,000,000 dollars. Just imagine how far behind in terms of per capita productivity we are. I think I want to see a Pakistan where we are not only cash flow positive, our economic indicators should be super positive. We have the biggest talent, which is human resource. I think we have the biggest opportunity to serve the world in better ways. We have the best doctors serving in Far Eastern countries like Brunei to The US to UK and Africa and Middle East. Why can't our other doctors stay here and still serve using technologies like five gs or other improvements? So I think there's no reason that we need better technology so that Pakistan is in a better situation economically and socioeconomically both ways, very, very quickly. I think every use case makes sense, but we need to educate our, people. We need to educate our businesses, our SMEs, our women entrepreneurs, our youth on how to leverage these technologies in a positive way. And, actually, I think that's where the, use case for the government and academia come in in educating all of this and scaling it up. So I certainly see a better Pakistan 2050, which is more stable, economically sustainable,

and which is serving the rest of the world with high value exports as well, as Yang mentioned. Injala. Sounds good. Hope that we see that future as Guys, thank you so much for coming in and sharing all the insight. I hope we get to see five g soon and maybe. All the player. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. And for all of you guys, thank you so much for watching. If you like this episode, please do share it with your friends. For your YouTube audience, you can like the channel. It will increase the engagement and reach more people. For people on the audio platforms, you can subscribe to the platform and get notified for future episodes. For, people on Facebook, there's a link down there where you can join the TBD community. We share different recommendations articles and get your feedback as well. You can join that as well. यहां पर कहीं पर easy पैसा jazz cash आ रहा होगा. If you'd like to support the channel, we accept anything from 1 rupee to as much as you'd like. It's a thought that counts. But anyways, this was Sayur Muzamel Asun Zedi. You are watching Thought Behind Things. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.