Interviews

Mr. Omar Rauf has been associated with this industry

for last 10 years. Started his career with Intel USA as
a Software Validation Engineer, now he works for
Pakistan’s Biggest Operator – Mobilink as Senior
Manager – QoS. He had also spent memorable 5years
with Nortel Pakistan before joining Mobilink in 2006.

• Your career

Did my bachelors in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering and

Technology Lahore in 1998. Completed my masters in Electrical engineering
from University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA). During my studies, I had a
chance to work on the project for QUALCOMM. It was to design the CDMA
mobile chip. After completing my masters, joined Intel Corporation as
software validation engineer. In 2001, came back to Pakistan and joined

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Nortel Networks in Pakistan. After working for Nortel for 5 years, then joined
Mobilink in Dec 2006 as a National Manger QoS and since then working here

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and gives me a great pride to work for the biggest operator in Pakistan.
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• Your interest and activities
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During my days in the university and school, I used to be quite actively

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involved in camping and trekking. I have almost visited all the major Northern
areas of Pakistan and I really enjoy going up in the mountains even still now.
Also being a Lahori by birth and stayed there for almost 25 years, I love
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easting spicy food. My favorite place for dinning out was “lakshmi, Lahore”.
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When I was in US, I really missed Pakistani food. I am currently settled in

Islamabad, and I think it is one of the best places to live in Pakistan because
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of serenity and less crowdedness. After my office hours, what ever time I get
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now, I spend it with my kids and wife and don’t find time to hang out with
friends anymore☺. Now I have really become a family man from a party guy
☺.

• Why did u choose telecom as a career?

I was working as software validation in Intel Corporation, USA. After 9/11, I

had to come back to Pakistan. I tried finding job in my specialty (VLSI circuit
design and Micro-processor designing) but there were no such opportunities
at that time. Fortunately, I had taken advance level courses in
Telecommunications as well as so I started looking for some telecom
opportunity. It was those days in 2001, when only Mobilink and Ufone were
there and there was no other telecom operator. Luckily, I had a friend who
was working in Nortel. Nortel was the providing the turn key solution to Ufone.
So he introduced me to his manager, who took interview and I got selected.

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Interviews
• Your early days in telecoms.

My early days were really hard like any other engineers. I had to drive test in
the remote areas of Multan and Faisalabad during all the night times ☺

• What were the feelings of working with the North American vendor for
quite some time?

Working for Nortel was really great in Pakistan. Since I had worked in US, so I
had the experience before of true multinational organization, and Nortel was
nothing less as compare to other multinational. I had been given all the
chance to grow, that’s why I joined Nortel as RF engineer and left it as RF
Manager. I only left Nortel as it didn’t have the work anymore, other wise I
would have probably stayed in Nortel throughout my whole life.

• Some interesting events you want to share with us about that experience.

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I would say the drive testing during the night times in the remote areas,
people used to peep inside the car with laptops and all the TEMS and they

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would give the expression like what the hell these guys are doing in night by
roaming around idly on the streets. But on the other side of it, I really enjoyed
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it as I saw those parts of Pakistan which I would have never seen otherwise.
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• How challenging is current job?
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Currently I am looking after end to end network performance and Quality of

service. Mobilink’s network is so huge and so widely scattered that to
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manage it efficiently, it really takes a great effort and time to be at par with
international standards.
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• Please tell us the importance of QoS in Telecom Networks.

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Quality of Service and Network Performance is really becoming important for

big networks. There should be one department which measures the end to
end performance of the network. It encompasses all the key entities like
access, core, IN, VAS, SMSC etc. Also the probe based monitoring is also on
the rise these days because you get to see the live network performance
using these probe based tools, like Astellia, Tekelec etc.

• What skills are needed for this newly formed field of Telecom?

Very in-depth knowledge on GSM involving Access and Core networks as

well as layer 3 messages. Quick understanding of the problem analysis is also
key for this field, and being monitoring a live network, you don’t have time to
let affect your customers.

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Interviews
• 3 things you would like to have in telecoms:

To come up with more innovative ways to make the telecom systems (BTS
etc) use the power effectively. For something particular for Pakistan, all these
operators should stop this price war, as this in return are effecting us, all the
commodities prices are going up, and ours going down, which in turn affects
the revenues and new job opportunities due to cost cutting in the operators.
Also end customer satisfaction (whether internal or external) is key to ones
success and most important factor for the services industry like ours.

• 1 thing you hate about telecom.

Late sittings in office and less time for your family.

• How do you see telecom globally?

Currently due to the economic crunch, the telecom industry will also have

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impact for short term, but I think it will continue to evolve especially in the
data networks.

• How do you see telecom in Pakistan? e l.n

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I think it has a great future, we still have to see the launch of 3G services in
Pakistan, and so those will be interesting times.
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• Your views on WiMAX locally and globally.

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WiMAX is a great technology but due to the handsets unavailability, it will

take some time for the mobile WiMAX 802.16e to be popular.
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• What advice will you give to our Fresh Grads?

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Competition is very tuff these days, so please take keen interest in your
studies, and try to do some internship in some good companies, that will get
you the exposure of the real world to you.

• What advice will you give to our telecom professionals?

Be patient in your lives and don’t switch the jobs for the sake of switching,
unless you have some real valid reason to do so.

• Your views about ZUMBEEL.

I have been associated with ZUMBEEL for more than 7 years now, and I have
seen it grow and evolve tremendously. It’s a great platform for the telecom
engineers of Pakistan working here and abroad to stay connected to each
other as well as to get the latest updates what’s happening in the telecom
world.

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