Mobilink ( Urdu : موبی لنک ) was the trade name of Pakistan Mobile Communications Limited ( PMCL ), a mobile operator in Pakistan providing a range of prepaid and postpaid voice and data telecommunication services to both individual and corporate subscribers. In 2017, Warid Pakistan merged with Mobilink to form Jazz , under which the company now operates. Mobilink's head office was in Islamabad , and its last president and CEO was Aamir Ibrahim, who became the CEO of Jazz.
99-703: The network claims to have been the first GSM -based mobile operator in South Asia. Formerly known as Mobilink, the company was founded in 1994 as a joint venture between Saif Group and Motorola Inc. In February 2001, Egypt based Orascom Telecom Holding bought Motorola’s shares in Mobilink to become the majority shareholder with 69% control. Then in June 2007, Orascom further purchased the remaining shares under Saif Group’s control to become Mobilink’s 100% owner. In 2010, Russian operator Vimpelcom (now VEON Ltd.) agreed to acquire most of
198-478: A PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Misplaced Pages by Magnus Manske . The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Misplaced Pages shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker . Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an Apache Lucene extension
297-402: A telecommunications service provider 's network via a broadband-internet connection. Umbrella cells are used to cover shadowed regions of smaller cells and to fill in gaps in coverage between those cells. Cell horizontal radius varies – depending on antenna height, antenna gain , and propagation conditions – from a couple of hundred meters to several tens of kilometers. The longest distance
396-597: A transclusion system for templates , and URL redirection . MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects. Originally, Misplaced Pages ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Misplaced Pages began running on
495-524: A "Knowledge Equity Fund", to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources. In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future. The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation , with
594-645: A caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore , the first of its kind in Asia. The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki , a custom-made, free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MariaDB database since 2013; previously the MySQL database was used. The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language , variables ,
693-441: A digital, circuit-switched network optimized for full duplex voice telephony . This expanded over time to include data communications, first by circuit-switched transport , then by packet data transport via General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). Subsequently, the 3GPP developed third-generation ( 3G ) UMTS standards, followed by the fourth-generation ( 4G ) LTE Advanced and
792-470: A feeder project to supplement Nupedia . The project was originally funded by Bomis , Wales's for-profit business, and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors. The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep, and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site, so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence. That addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for
891-552: A former Nokia engineer Pekka Lonka revealed to Helsingin Sanomat making a test call just a couple of hours earlier. "World's first GSM call was actually made by me. I called Marjo Jousinen, in Salo.", Lonka informed. The following year saw the sending of the first short messaging service (SMS or "text message") message, and Vodafone UK and Telecom Finland signed the first international roaming agreement. Work began in 1991 to expand
990-526: A grant agreement was reached with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the " Knowledge Engine ", a project that proved controversial . In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another $ 3 million grant for a three-year period, and Google donated another $ 1.1 million to the Foundation in 2019. The following have donated $ 500,000 or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to
1089-562: A joint development agreement in 1984 and were joined by Italy and the UK in 1986. In 1986, the European Commission proposed reserving the 900 MHz spectrum band for GSM. It was long believed that the former Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri made the world's first GSM call on 1 July 1991, calling Kaarina Suonio (deputy mayor of the city of Tampere ) using a network built by Nokia and Siemens and operated by Radiolinja . In 2021
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#17328844584781188-577: A mandatory standard. The decision to develop a continental standard eventually resulted in a unified, open, standard-based network which was larger than that in the United States. In February 1987 Europe produced the first agreed GSM Technical Specification. Ministers from the four big EU countries cemented their political support for GSM with the Bonn Declaration on Global Information Networks in May and
1287-571: A more easily consumable way, the data of the Wikimedia projects, including Misplaced Pages . It allows customers to retrieve data at large scale and high availability through different formats like Web APIs , data snapshots or streams . It was announced in March 2021, and launched on October 26, 2021. Google and the Internet Archive were its first customers, although Internet Archive is not paying for
1386-620: A move as letting down those who elected me." He subsequently added that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Engine project and its financing, and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal. Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017. In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined
1485-539: A number of countries in Africa and the Middle East. List of people in board of directors to whom Mobilink is governed. The Mobilink Foundation is a registered non-profit organization, which provides support for the local community not only financially but also through dedicated volunteer hours. Being a philanthropic organization, it is purely based on employee volunteerism. No administrative costs or overheads are incurred age
1584-456: A problem for any open-source GSM implementation, because it is not possible for GNU or any other free software distributor to guarantee immunity from all lawsuits by the patent holders against the users. Furthermore, new features are being added to the standard all the time which means they have patent protection for a number of years. The original GSM implementations from 1991 may now be entirely free of patent encumbrances, however patent freedom
1683-527: A relationship between two parts of the algorithm. The researchers found that this relationship was very unlikely to have happened if it was not intentional. This may have been done in order to satisfy European controls on export of cryptographic programs. The GSM systems and services are described in a set of standards governed by ETSI , where a full list is maintained. Several open-source software projects exist that provide certain GSM features: Patents remain
1782-772: A single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture . Server downtime in 2003 led to the first fundraising drive. By December 2009, Wikimedia ran on co-located servers, with 300 servers in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam . In 2008, it also switched from multiple different Linux operating system vendors to Ubuntu Linux . In 2019, it switched to Debian . By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia , citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes ". In years prior,
1881-681: A stated goal to raise $ 100 million in the next 10 years. Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving $ 1 million. Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing , of Arcadia Fund , donated $ 5 million in 2017. In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook ($ 1 million each) and George Soros ($ 2 million). In 2019, donations included $ 2 million from Google, $ 3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing, $ 2.5 million more from Newmark, and another $ 1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020. As of 2023,
1980-478: A stronger one. Since 2000, different efforts have been made in order to crack the A5 encryption algorithms. Both A5/1 and A5/2 algorithms have been broken, and their cryptanalysis has been revealed in the literature. As an example, Karsten Nohl developed a number of rainbow tables (static values which reduce the time needed to carry out an attack) and have found new sources for known plaintext attacks . He said that it
2079-443: A term referring to inexperienced individuals utilizing readily available hardware and software. The vulnerability arises from the accessibility of tools such as a DVB-T TV tuner, posing a threat to both mobile and network users. Despite the term "script kiddies" implying a lack of sophisticated skills, the consequences of their attacks on GSM can be severe, impacting the functionality of cellular networks . Given that GSM continues to be
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#17328844584782178-536: A trustee recently elected to the board by the community, was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board. This decision generated dispute among members of the Misplaced Pages community. Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such
2277-444: Is 4.615 ms. TDMA noise is interference that can be heard on speakers near a GSM phone using TDMA, audible as a buzzing sound. The transmission power in the handset is limited to a maximum of 2 watts in GSM 850/900 and 1 watt in GSM 1800/1900 . GSM has used a variety of voice codecs to squeeze 3.1 kHz audio into between 7 and 13 kbit/s. Originally, two codecs, named after
2376-645: Is B60 ( Adult , Continuing education ). The Foundation filed an application to trademark the name Misplaced Pages in the US to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences on September 14, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded also by Japan on December 16, 2004, and by the European Union on January 20, 2005. Subsets of Misplaced Pages were already being distributed in book and DVD form, and there were discussions about licensing
2475-629: Is also a trade mark owned by the GSM Association . " GSM " may also refer to the voice codec initially used in GSM. It was first implemented in Finland in December 1991. By the mid-2010s, it became a global standard for mobile communications achieving over 90% market share, and operating in over 193 countries and territories. 2G networks developed as a replacement for first generation ( 1G ) analog cellular networks. The GSM standard originally described
2574-499: Is also available with no photos on Mobilink. Mobilink previously announced its merger with Warid Tel in November 2015. The case was under review at Pakistan telecommunication authority . After scrutiny PTA finally approved the merger on 24 May 2016. In January 2017, Mobilink CEO, Aamir Ibrahim, stated that the Warid brand name would be history, and both companies would be re-launched under
2673-426: Is called SIM locking and is implemented by a software feature of the phone. A subscriber may usually contact the provider to remove the lock for a fee, utilize private services to remove the lock, or use software and websites to unlock the handset themselves. It is possible to hack past a phone locked by a network operator. In some countries and regions (e.g. Brazil and Germany ) all phones are sold unlocked due to
2772-443: Is not certain due to the United States' "first to invent" system that was in place until 2012. The "first to invent" system, coupled with "patent term adjustment" can extend the life of a U.S. patent far beyond 20 years from its priority date. It is unclear at this time whether OpenBTS will be able to implement features of that initial specification without limit. As patents subsequently expire, however, those features can be added into
2871-496: Is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires , Cambridge , Haifa , Hong Kong , Taipei , London , Mexico City , Esino Lario , Italy , Montreal , Cape Town , and Stockholm . The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok
2970-486: Is possible to build "a full GSM interceptor ... from open-source components" but that they had not done so because of legal concerns. Nohl claimed that he was able to intercept voice and text conversations by impersonating another user to listen to voicemail , make calls, or send text messages using a seven-year-old Motorola cellphone and decryption software available for free online. GSM uses General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) for data transmissions like browsing
3069-507: Is said to be in use on some more modern networks. If used with USIM to prevent connections to fake base stations and downgrade attacks , users will be protected in the medium term, though migration to 128-bit GEA/4 is still recommended. The first public cryptanalysis of GEA/1 and GEA/2 (also written GEA-1 and GEA-2) was done in 2021. It concluded that although using a 64-bit key, the GEA-1 algorithm actually provides only 40 bits of security, due to
Mobilink - Misplaced Pages Continue
3168-551: The Charities Aid Foundation , scheduled to be funded in five equal installments from 2012 through 2015. In 2014, the Foundation received the largest single gift in its history, a $ 5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting $ 1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years. In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation , established by the Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded
3267-665: The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) set up the Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) committee and later provided a permanent technical-support group based in Paris . Five years later, in 1987, 15 representatives from 13 European countries signed a memorandum of understanding in Copenhagen to develop and deploy a common cellular telephone system across Europe, and EU rules were passed to make GSM
3366-541: The Northern Territory had earlier in the year been shut down in April 2017. Singapore shut down 2G services entirely in April 2017. The network is structured into several discrete sections: GSM utilizes a cellular network , meaning that cell phones connect to it by searching for cells in the immediate vicinity. There are five different cell sizes in a GSM network: The coverage area of each cell varies according to
3465-554: The San Francisco Bay Area . Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel. The move was completed by January 31, 2008, into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco. It later moved to New Montgomery Street, and then to One Montgomery Tower . On October 25, 2021,
3564-745: The Wikimedia movement 's websites. WMF is now the registrant of the domain wikipedia.org , owner of the trademark and operator of the wiki platform. It runs projects like Wikibooks , Wikidata , Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons ; it raises money, distributes grants, controls the servers, develops and deploys software, and does outreach to support Wikimedia projects, including the English Misplaced Pages . It also engages in political advocacy regarding copyright, press freedom and legal protection of websites from liability related to user content. The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from
3663-553: The 'Jazz' brand name. After the acquisition of Warid now Mobilink joins the 4G service provider in Pakistan. GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications ( GSM ) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G ) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. GSM
3762-591: The 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), code-division multiple access (CDMA) technology, nor the 4G LTE orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technology standards issued by the 3GPP. GSM, for the first time, set a common standard for Europe for wireless networks. It was also adopted by many countries outside Europe. This allowed subscribers to use other GSM networks that have roaming agreements with each other. The common standard reduced research and development costs, since hardware and software could be sold with only minor adaptations for
3861-682: The 900 MHz or 1800 MHz bands. Where these bands were already allocated, the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands were used instead (for example in Canada and the United States). In rare cases the 400 and 450 MHz frequency bands are assigned in some countries because they were previously used for first-generation systems. For comparison, most 3G networks in Europe operate in the 2100 MHz frequency band. For more information on worldwide GSM frequency usage, see GSM frequency bands . Regardless of
3960-511: The Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet: a three-year, $ 3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation . In 2009, the Foundation received four grants. The first was a $ 890,000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Misplaced Pages. The second was a $ 300,000 Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons , to improve
4059-460: The Foundation approved, finalized and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models. An additional model for movement partners, was also approved, but as of May 19, 2022 has not yet been finalized or adopted. Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians, started in 2005. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt , Germany, in 2005. Wikimania
Mobilink - Misplaced Pages Continue
4158-568: The Foundation as affiliates officially when its board does so. The board's decisions are based on recommendations of an Affiliations Committee (AffCom), composed of Wikimedia community members, which reports regularly to the board. The Affiliations Committee directly approves the recognition of unincorporated user groups. Affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, but are independent of it, with no legal control of or responsibility for Wikimedia projects and their content. The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004. In 2012,
4257-438: The Foundation launched Wikimedia Enterprise , a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high-volume APIs, starting with Big Tech enterprises. In June 2022, Google and the Internet Archive were announced as the service's first customers, though only Google will pay for the service. The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs, supporting
4356-572: The Foundation received a $ 40,000 grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Misplaced Pages. It also received a $ 262,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to purchase hardware , a $ 500,000 unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla , who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board, and $ 177,376 from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin ( Arcadia Fund ), among others. In March 2008,
4455-501: The Foundation's "awards and grants" expenses. In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $ 100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target. In January 2024, the endowment was reported to have a value of $ 140 million. The Foundation summarizes its assets in the "Statements of Activities" in its audited reports. These do not include funds in
4554-553: The GSM MoU was tabled for signature in September. The MoU drew in mobile operators from across Europe to pledge to invest in new GSM networks to an ambitious common date. In this short 38-week period the whole of Europe (countries and industries) had been brought behind GSM in a rare unity and speed guided by four public officials: Armin Silberhorn (Germany), Stephen Temple (UK), Philippe Dupuis (France), and Renzo Failli (Italy). In 1989
4653-470: The GSM specification supports in practical use is 35 kilometres (22 mi). There are also several implementations of the concept of an extended cell, where the cell radius could be double or even more, depending on the antenna system, the type of terrain, and the timing advance . GSM supports indoor coverage – achievable by using an indoor picocell base station, or an indoor repeater with distributed indoor antennas fed through power splitters – to deliver
4752-516: The GSM standard served 80% of the mobile market, encompassing more than 5 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories, making GSM the most ubiquitous of the many standards for cellular networks. GSM is a second-generation (2G) standard employing time-division multiple-access (TDMA) spectrum-sharing, issued by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The GSM standard does not include
4851-541: The GSM standard to the 1800 MHz frequency band and the first 1800 MHz network became operational in the UK by 1993, called the DCS 1800. Also that year, Telstra became the first network operator to deploy a GSM network outside Europe and the first practical hand-held GSM mobile phone became available. In 1995 fax, data and SMS messaging services were launched commercially, the first 1900 MHz GSM network became operational in
4950-552: The Groupe Spécial Mobile committee was transferred from CEPT to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The IEEE/RSE awarded to Thomas Haug and Philippe Dupuis the 2018 James Clerk Maxwell medal for their "leadership in the development of the first international mobile communications standard with subsequent evolution into worldwide smartphone data communication". The GSM (2G) has evolved into 3G, 4G and 5G. In parallel France and Germany signed
5049-567: The Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a $ 3.6 million grant of which $ 1.8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received. In November 2011, the Foundation received a $ 500,000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation . In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of $ 1.25 million from Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin through
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#17328844584785148-419: The United States and GSM subscribers worldwide exceeded 10 million. In the same year, the GSM Association formed. Pre-paid GSM SIM cards were launched in 1996 and worldwide GSM subscribers passed 100 million in 1998. In 2000 the first commercial General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) services were launched and the first GPRS-compatible handsets became available for sale. In 2001, the first UMTS (W-CDMA) network
5247-483: The United States; A5/2 is weaker and used in other countries. Serious weaknesses have been found in both algorithms: it is possible to break A5/2 in real-time with a ciphertext-only attack , and in January 2007, The Hacker's Choice started the A5/1 cracking project with plans to use FPGAs that allow A5/1 to be broken with a rainbow table attack. The system supports multiple algorithms so operators may replace that cipher with
5346-494: The Wikimedia Endowment): The Foundation's board of trustees supervises the activities of the Foundation. The founding board had three members, to which two community-elected trustees were added. Starting in 2008 it was composed of ten members: Over time, the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved. As of 2020, the board may have up to 16 trustees: In 2015, James Heilman ,
5445-453: The Wikimedia Endowment, however expenses from the 2015–16 financial year onward include payments to the Wikimedia Endowment. A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages, followed by community and affiliate grants, contributions to the endowment, and other professional operating expenses and services. The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history. In 2008,
5544-659: The Wikimedia Foundation a $ 449,636 grant to develop Wikidata . This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort. Between 2014 and 2015, the Foundation received $ 500,000 from the Monarch Fund, $ 100,000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the Misplaced Pages Zero initiative. In 2015,
5643-425: The Wikimedia movement, such as regional conferences, outreach, edit-a-thons , hackathons , public relations , public policy advocacy, GLAM engagement, and Wikimania . While many of these things are also done by individual contributors or less formal groups, they are not referred to as affiliates. Wikimedia chapters and thematic organizations are incorporated non-profit organizations. They are recognized by
5742-634: The Misplaced Pages Education Program (and the spin-off Wiki Education Foundation ). In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another $ 3 million grant, to be funded over three years, with the first $ 1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining $ 2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a donor, Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In August 2011,
5841-427: The abundance of dual-SIM handsets and operators. GSM was intended to be a secure wireless system. It has considered the user authentication using a pre-shared key and challenge–response , and over-the-air encryption. However, GSM is vulnerable to different types of attack, each of them aimed at a different part of the network. Research findings indicate that GSM faces susceptibility to hacking by script kiddies ,
5940-508: The advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales , Peter Baldwin , former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers , former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation , investor Annette Campbell-White , venture capitalist Michael Kim, portfolio manager Alexander M. Farman-Farmaian, and strategist Lisa Lewin. The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of $ 5 million to its Endowment since 2016. These amounts have been recorded as part of
6039-820: The board before stepping down amid community controversy about a " no poach " agreement he executed when at Google , which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$ 415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees. As of January 2024, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak , Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight , Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel and Lorenzo Losa); five Board-appointed trustees ( McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti , Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei , technology officer Luis Bitencourt-Emilio, Nataliia Tymkiv, and financial expert Kathy Collins); and Wales. Tymkiv chairs
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#17328844584786138-475: The brand name of Infinity, Mobilink had started its WiMAX services in major cities of Pakistan. Despite having the 66% of Mobilink GSM business share, in April 2001, Orascom ( GTH ) took over management control of the company. As the market leader, Mobilink serves approximately 38.1 million customers and has a 28% market share (as of March 31, 2014). On March 30, 2000, Mobilink was 66% acquired by Orascom Investment Holding. Orascom has mobile telephony holdings in
6237-853: The different external or internal divisions managing each platform and now all operate under the different brands. Mobilink along with Haier Mobile division has launched co-branded handsets including feature phone, smartphones, and tablets. Mobilink has partnered with Waseela Microfinance Bank to mark its entry into the branchless banking segment. With Mobicash , customers have access to the simplest way to conduct their financial transactions, related to paying bills, sending/receiving money within Pakistan , purchasing top-ups for their cell phones (Pre-paid). LINkdotNET (an Orascom Subsidiary) commenced its operation in Pakistan by acquiring two already existing Internet Service Providers ( ISPs ) named as World Online (WOL) Telecom Limited and Dancom Online. LINKdotNET merged
6336-414: The end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004, to $ 53.5 million in mid-2014 and $ 231 million (plus a $ 100 million endowment) by the end of June 2021; that year, the Foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise, to let large organizations pay by volume for high-volume access to otherwise rate-limited APIs. In 2020, the Foundation donated $ 4.5 million to Tides Advocacy to create
6435-517: The fifth-generation 5G standards, which do not form part of the ETSI GSM standard. Beginning in the late 2010s, various carriers worldwide started to shut down their GSM networks . Nevertheless, as a result of the network's widespread use, the acronym "GSM" is still used as a generic term for the plethora of G mobile phone technologies evolved from it. In 1983, work began to develop a European standard for digital cellular voice telecommunications when
6534-416: The frequency selected by an operator, it is divided into timeslots for individual phones. This allows eight full-rate or sixteen half-rate speech channels per radio frequency . These eight radio timeslots (or burst periods) are grouped into a TDMA frame. Half-rate channels use alternate frames in the same timeslot. The channel data rate for all 8 channels is 270.833 kbit/s, and the frame duration
6633-500: The hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress. In October 2013, Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn, citing reasons of redundancy (e.g. emergency fallback ) and to prepare for simultaneous multi-datacenter service. This followed a year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012. Apart from
6732-492: The implementation environment. Macro cells can be regarded as cells where the base-station antenna is installed on a mast or a building above average rooftop level. Micro cells are cells whose antenna height is under average rooftop level; they are typically deployed in urban areas. Picocells are small cells whose coverage diameter is a few dozen meters; they are mainly used indoors. Femtocells are cells designed for use in residential or small-business environments and connect to
6831-544: The interface for uploading multimedia files. In August 2009, the Foundation received a $ 500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation . Also in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to $ 2 million over two years to Wikimedia. In 2010, Google donated $ 2 million and the Stanton Foundation granted $ 1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what later became
6930-614: The key features of GSM is the Subscriber Identity Module , commonly known as a SIM card . The SIM is a detachable smart card containing a user's subscription information and phone book. This allows users to retain their information after switching handsets. Alternatively, users can change networks or network identities without switching handsets - simply by changing the SIM. Sometimes mobile network operators restrict handsets that they sell for exclusive use in their own network. This
7029-596: The local market. Telstra in Australia shut down its 2G GSM network on 1 December 2016, the first mobile network operator to decommission a GSM network. The second mobile provider to shut down its GSM network (on 1 January 2017) was AT&T Mobility from the United States . Optus in Australia completed the shut down of its 2G GSM network on 1 August 2017, part of the Optus GSM network covering Western Australia and
7128-430: The logo and wordmark. On December 11, 2006, the Foundation's board noted that it could not become a membership organization , as initially planned but not implemented, due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law. The bylaws were accordingly amended to remove all references to membership rights and activities. In 2007, the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to
7227-414: The main source of cellular technology in numerous countries, its susceptibility to potential threats from malicious attacks is one that needs to be addressed. The development of UMTS introduced an optional Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM), that uses a longer authentication key to give greater security, as well as mutually authenticating the network and the user, whereas GSM only authenticates
7326-483: The merger was completed in July 2016 and the companies were going to plan for integration and merging into a single brand in the future. In November 2016, Mobilink announced that Warid customers would be able to use their 3G network, and Mobilink customers will be able to use Warid's LTE network. Mobilink is a communications access provider offering customers access through different channels. The four key platforms Mobilink operates are: Mobilink (PMCL) acquired and merged
7425-466: The open-source version. As of 2011 , there have been no lawsuits against users of OpenBTS over GSM use. Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. , abbreviated WMF , is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco , California , and registered there as a charitable foundation . It is the host of Misplaced Pages , the seventh most visited website in
7524-485: The organization and therefore, every single penny that is donated to Mobilink Foundation goes directly into making a difference on the ground. The Mobilink Foundation Torchbearers clock an average of 4 to 5 dedicated hours per person per month during official working hours. On average the volunteers spent more than 4,500 hours in 2012 in community service initiatives. Mobilink also provides free services like access to Wikimedia Foundation 's Misplaced Pages Zero . Free Facebook
7623-483: The product. A New York Times Magazine article was reporting that Wikimedia Enterprise made $ 3.1 million in total revenue in 2022. Wikimedia affiliates are independent and formally recognized groups of people working together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation officially recognizes three types of affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. Affiliates organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to
7722-499: The project. The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida on June 20, 2003. A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003. In 2005, the Foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Code as a public charity, making donations to the Foundation tax-deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code
7821-674: The public, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Misplaced Pages, as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations. Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will. As a 501(c)(3) charity, the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax. It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars, increased from three to four stars in 2010. As of January 2020 ,
7920-552: The radio signals from an antenna outdoors to the separate indoor distributed antenna system. Picocells are typically deployed when significant call capacity is needed indoors, as in shopping centers or airports. However, this is not a prerequisite, since indoor coverage is also provided by in-building penetration of radio signals from any nearby cell. GSM networks operate in a number of different carrier frequency ranges (separated into GSM frequency ranges for 2G and UMTS frequency bands for 3G), with most 2G GSM networks operating in
8019-497: The rating was still four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018. The Foundation also increases its revenue through federal grants , sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years. DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge. An expanded version of data feeds and content services
8118-452: The resources of these two companies and by putting in more investment launched its operations officially on 2 February 2008. It was offering its services in more than 130 cities in Pakistan and in two years this company raised its customer base up to 35,000. LINKdotNET provided services for both home and commercial users and was the second-largest broadband service provider in Pakistan after PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunication Limited). Under
8217-482: The second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014, the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009. As of November 2015, the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis , such as cloud services (Toolforge) and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration. In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed
8316-414: The second wiki-based project hosted on the original server. The Foundation's mission is collection and distribution of educational knowledge under free licenses or public domain and promised to keep these projects free of charge. All intellectual property rights and domain names about Misplaced Pages were moved to the Foundation after its inception, and it currently owns the domain names and maintains most of
8415-418: The service through "a lot paying a little". The Foundation owns and operates 11 wiki-based content projects that are written and governed by volunteer editors. They include, by launch date: The Foundation also operates wikis and services that provide infrastructure or coordination of the content projects. These include: Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide, in
8514-458: The signal. GSM was further enhanced in 1997 with the enhanced full rate (EFR) codec, a 12.2 kbit/s codec that uses a full-rate channel. Finally, with the development of UMTS , EFR was refactored into a variable-rate codec called AMR-Narrowband , which is high quality and robust against interference when used on full-rate channels, or less robust but still relatively high quality when used in good radio conditions on half-rate channel. One of
8613-1112: The technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world. The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the projects themselves. Instead, this is done by volunteer editors, such as the Wikipedians . However, it does collaborate with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations, such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners. The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from readers and editors, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Misplaced Pages and its sister projects. These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise . As of 2023, it has employed over 700 staff and contractors, with net assets of $ 255 million and an endowment which has surpassed $ 100 million. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Misplaced Pages in 2001 as
8712-451: The telecom assets of Orascom, including Mobilink, in a $ 6.5 billion deal, creating the world’s fifth-largest mobile network operator by subscriber base. In November 2015, Vimpelcom announced the 100% acquisition of Pakistan’s Warid Telecom, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Group. Completed in July 2016 after due approvals, the first-ever local telecom company acquisition created a combined subscriber base of 50 million. Following this merger, Mobilink
8811-400: The types of data channel they were allocated, were used, called Half Rate (6.5 kbit/s) and Full Rate (13 kbit/s). These used a system based on linear predictive coding (LPC). In addition to being efficient with bitrates , these codecs also made it easier to identify more important parts of the audio, allowing the air interface layer to prioritize and better protect these parts of
8910-415: The user to the network (and not vice versa). The security model therefore offers confidentiality and authentication, but limited authorization capabilities, and no non-repudiation . GSM uses several cryptographic algorithms for security. The A5/1 , A5/2 , and A5/3 stream ciphers are used for ensuring over-the-air voice privacy. A5/1 was developed first and is a stronger algorithm used within Europe and
9009-535: The web. The most commonly deployed GPRS ciphers were publicly broken in 2011. The researchers revealed flaws in the commonly used GEA/1 and GEA/2 (standing for GPRS Encryption Algorithms 1 and 2) ciphers and published the open-source "gprsdecode" software for sniffing GPRS networks. They also noted that some carriers do not encrypt the data (i.e., using GEA/0) in order to detect the use of traffic or protocols they do not like (e.g., Skype ), leaving customers unprotected. GEA/3 seems to remain relatively hard to break and
9108-411: The world. It also hosts fourteen related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki , the wiki software that underpins them all. The Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales , as a non-profit way to fund these wiki projects. They had previously been hosted by Bomis , Wales's for-profit company. The Wikimedia Foundation provides
9207-424: The worldwide cellular network market, serving 1.5 billion subscribers. In 2005, the first HSDPA -capable network also became operational. The first HSUPA network launched in 2007. ( High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and its uplink and downlink versions are 3G technologies, not part of GSM.) Worldwide GSM subscribers exceeded three billion in 2008. The GSM Association estimated in 2011 that technologies defined in
9306-436: Was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Misplaced Pages switched from MySQL to Lucene and later switched to CirrusSearch which is based on Elasticsearch for searching. The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM and WordPress . The Foundation published official Misplaced Pages mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features. The Wikimedia Foundation
9405-646: Was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic , along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. The in-person conference returned in 2023 when it was held in Singapore, at which UNESCO joined as a partner organization. The Wikimedia Foundation maintains the hardware that runs its projects in its own servers. It also maintains the MediaWiki platform and many other software libraries that run its projects. Misplaced Pages employed
9504-513: Was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales so that there would be an independent charitable entity responsible for company domains and trademarks, and so that Misplaced Pages and its sister projects could be funded through non-profit means in the future. The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media , was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Misplaced Pages mailing list in March 2003, three months after Wiktionary became
9603-417: Was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation. In July 2014, the Foundation announced it would accept Bitcoin donations. In 2021, cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a Wikimedia community vote. The Foundation's net assets grew from an initial $ 57,000 at
9702-484: Was launched, a 3G technology that is not part of GSM. Worldwide GSM subscribers exceeded 500 million. In 2002, the first Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) was introduced and the first GSM network in the 800 MHz frequency band became operational. Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) services first became operational in a network in 2003, and the number of worldwide GSM subscribers exceeded 1 billion in 2004. By 2005 GSM networks accounted for more than 75% of
9801-508: Was officially rebranded to Jazz in 2017. In April 2014, Mobilink participated in the Next Generation Mobile Services (NGMS) auction held by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) , Mobilink won the bid for the 2100 MHz 3G license. In July 2014, they announced that their 3G network would be the country's largest with over 9000 3G-ready cell sites. In November 2015, Mobilink announced its merger with Warid Pakistan ,
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