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Monday 4 April 2011

HEC Dissolution to Provincial Level.

The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) in now dissolved to provincial level. Former chairman of HEC and the pioneer of lucrative educational policies Dr. Atta Ur Rehman is terming this as a "National Disaster." In an interview on a private news television channel he mentioned some the most obvious reasons for this dissolution which are:

1. To avoid degree scrutiny by our political leaders as member of the parliament needs to hold a graduate degree. The verification of these degrees was given to the HEC and as a result created a rift between the commission and the political circles.

2. To get illegal access to huge lands owned by different universities around Pakistan.

3. To further practice corruption within the education sector and to nurture respective political ideologies. As after this, it will be the provincial regulatory committees responsible for the provision of scholarships, grants and to oversee state and private universities. As a result, it would be soon that one would be able to find two-room universities in different corners of the country nurturing different political ideologies.

Now as a graduate myself in Pakistan and hoping to pursue my doctorate studies here; What do students like me fear? To start with, HEC now working as cells around Pakistan would lose its centralized transparent structure as we already have seen how incompetent our provincial structure is. Thanks to the 18th amendment of Pakistan constitution; which is dubbed to be the best thing happened to Pakistan since the 1973 constitution but only if we had a reliable strong political structure. Given the present scenario everyone is aware how dire this step is and what consequences we would be visible in few years time.

I also fear the the different grants and scholarships available to the Pakistani students from different governments and organizations around the would would be stopped. Its has been only few hours since the news of HEC dissolution is announced and already we had a statement from the present HEC chairman Dr. Javaid Laghari that the USAID and World Bank has stopped their aid which sums up to about $550 billion that was to be used by HEC for the coming 5 years to carry out different projects. Apart from these future promises, the present structure of the commission in question is also uncertain of its future like the HEC Digital Library and HEC e-learning.

Now the interesting thing would be to see how the nation responds to this. Dr. Atta-Ur-Rehman and Dr. Javed Leghari are already appearing on different news channels to sum up these mentioned facts to the nation. What matters now is would there be someone to carry out any action on this unfolding situation. I hope and I pray that there would be some patriotic Pakistanis among us that would stand up to this matter and do justice with it.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Mobile Communication Technologies for Dummies.

Different communication technologies and then the different standards between countries and upon it the non-stop introduction of wireless gadgets often makes me confused and eventually I mix up the concepts. Now I decided to make myself a simple/easy to understand table for a quick review of these technologies.

Generation Name Year Frequency Data Rate
1G AMPS – Advanced Mobile Phone System (using FDMA) 1980’s 800 – 900 MHz
1G D-AMPS – Digital AMPS (adding TDMA to AMPS) 800 – 900 MHz
2G IS-95 (using CDMA) 1990’s 800 MHz
2G GSM – Global System for Mobile Communication (using TDMA) 1990’s 900 – 1800 MHz
2G GSM GPRS – General Packer Radio Services (by 3GPP*) 2000 144 Kbps
2.5G 1xRTT – One Time Radio Transmission Technology (by 3GPP2**) 2002 144 Kbps
2.5G EDGE – Enhanced Data GSM Environment (by 3GPP) 2003 384 Kbps
3G UMTS – Universal Mobile Telecommunication System 2002 1885 – 2025 MHz 1.92 Mbps
3G UMTS HSDPA – High Speed Downlink Packet Access 2002 14.4 Mbps
3G EV-DO – 1x-Evolution-Data Optimized (using CDMA) (by 3GPP2) 2.4 Mbps
3G EV-DO Rev. A (by 3GPP2) 3.1 Mbps
3G EV-DO Rev. B (by 3GPP2) 4.9 Mbps
4G UMB *** – Ultra Mobile Broadband (by 3GPP2) 288 Mbps downstream
4G LTE – Long Term Evolution (by 3GPP) 2009 1920 Mhz – 3600 Mhz 100 Mbps downstream 30 Mbps upstream

* - 3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Body responsible of up-gradation of GSM networks in Europe, Japan, North America, South Korea.

** - 3GPP2 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Body responsible for up-gradation of CDMA networks in US (also South Korea and Japan.)

*** - Instead of adopting UMB, it has now been decided favoring LTE instead by the service providers.

4G is currently implemented in Sweden and South Korea. UK has recently declared licenses for 4G service provision. While in Pakistan 2.5G EDGE is currently implemented but not a single provider has upgraded to 3G. Huawei did implemented a couple of experimental 3G sites but its not sure where some operator would adopt it in near future.

P.S: Stuff here has been collected from various online resources and there might be some errors. So please do point them out so I can correct them.