Mobilink Launches Wimax Service in Karachi

Mobilink launched it's Wimax Services in Karachi. Branded Mobilink Infinity, this service will be competing directly with Wateen's flawed Wimax offering.

Mobilink Infinity rates are quite reasonable. CPE Cost is Rs 12,000 (approx.USD 160) which is being offered at a subsidized cost of Rs 6000 (usd 85 approx). One-tme setup charges are Rs 2000 (usd 30 approx). These have been waived off at the initial launch. Let's see how the Mobilink offering fares in Karachi.



Update linuxgeek has been using Mobilink Infinity in Karachi. Click here to read about his experience.

Phillip Jopa, CTO Allied Telesis delivering his presentation

Allied-Telesis Holds Seminar in Islamabad

Allied Telesis (formerly Allied Telesyn), held a seminar on its products and on Triple Play rollouts in general highlighting their integrated Multiservice Access Platform (iMAP) at Serena Islamabad.

This box does all you can imagine ... and Allied Telesys of course pitched it to be superior to Cisco and Juniper solutions.

Nah...it doesn't do GPON. It does do GEPON. And lots of other stuff.

Nayatel Chooses Tellabs to roll out Next Generation SDH Network

Nayatel has chosen the Tellabs Next-Generation SDH platform to roll out its NG-SDH Network. Geared towards providing legacy TDM services to the market, Tellabs platform provides TDM, Assured Ethernet as well as CWDM and DWDM capability.

Nayatel and Wateen Form First End-to-End MPLS VPN
Nayatel and Wateen Telecom successfully commissioned an MPLS IP VPN for a customer. This is the first InterProvider MPLS VPN between two providers in Pakistan that I am aware of. The last mile in Islamabad is provided by Nayatel on its MPLS Metro and the last mile in Lahore is provided by Wateen Telecom.

A few months back, I asked TWA1 and PTCL to form the Interprovider MPLS VPN with Nayatel. TWA1 was busy at that moment and from PTCL my email elicited no reply as usual.

Meeting on the .PK Future at PTA Headquaters

The dot PK Hullabaloo


Someone once quipped that the best workers in the world were Pakistanis and the worst ones were Pakistanis working in a group. I couldn't agree more. Not directly connected to this is Rodney King's quote that was caught on tape as ruthless L.A.P.D. officers beat him "Can't we all get along?". With Pakistani mind, there could be more serious fundamental questions like "Why in the hell do I want to get along?" or "Who the f*** are you to tell me to get along?". Sigh.

Ashar Nisar, from UET 82 session, and of course my university senior has been running PKNIC, the company that manages Pakistan's top level Domain .PK since the last sixteen years.

First, back in the 1980s, Pakistan Telecomunications Company (ala PTCL) tried it's garangutan ego to 'save' the PK domain from a Pakistani working out of the US. Thank God that PTCL failed. Hmmm... we never hear of PTCL's successes do we :-)

After a while, the National Telecommunications Corporation (NTC) caught the same virus of conquering the .PK domain. Thank God that they failed miserably as well. NTC quotes 'national security' concerns for bringing the .PK 'back home'. 'Masud Saab, we are very concerned about National Security and what the Americans could do if they changed the records of the .PK TLD in the US' said a Colonel. 'But Colonel....are the Americans going to do it', I asked. 'Well they could', he said. 'Yes, Colonel. And what if they screw the Root Servers controlling the .net, .com, .org and other Top Level Domain?. That would affect the whole world!'. Seeing that I was not impressed with his argument, he quickly changed the topic. Had NTC got the .PK domain, I can bet that the turn around time for a process that took one minute would have gone to a year!!

Finally, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) woke up and realized what a great golden-egg-laying chick the PKNIC was. So far so good. The .PK TLD is still controlled and maintained by PKNIC. What does a regulator have to do with something like a .PK TLD?

At the meeting called by PTA on the topic, I was surprised by the ignorance of the people from public and even IT companies who did not have a clue to how the Domain Name System (DNS) worked. One person quipped... 'NADRA ka sara data PKNIC say paas ho kay jaata hay' (all data of the National Database passes through PKNIC). On hearing this, I seriously looked around to find a wall to bang my head against it :-). Strangely enough, the PTA clock showed the GMT+5 timezone whereas PTA ordered the whole nation to switch to the GMT+6 timezone at Midnight of 1st June, 2008. A legless man teaching running :-)

The PTA Clock... An hour behind the nation

Coming back to Why can't we all get along? paradigm, why can't we just let PKNIC run the .PK domain. Can't we just a moment appreciate the good that a person or company is doing?

Seriously, we need to learn to give credit where credit is due. Lets at least pretend to have a big heart!

Blast at Danish Embassy in Islamabad Kills 8

Just as I was leaving for Lunch with a friend, we heard a very loud blast. I took this picture from my office. You can see the smoke rising from the site of the blast in the picture below. It was only in the restaurant that we learned from GEO News that eight people had been killed in this blast which took place in the parking of the Denmark Embassy. This country is really going to the dogs!

SEAMEWE-4 Cable Cut again near Singapore
The SEAMEWE-4 Cable system was cut about 46km off Singapore today which resulted in the internet traffic on the Pakistan's Upstream Provider TW1 being blackholed for sometime.

At the moment, no official email has been recieved from the SEAMEWE-4 NOC although an estimated repair time is four days.

The Western segment of SEAMEWE-4 is fine at the moment. PTCL traffic is fine as well since they load balance on SEAMEWE-3 and FLAG cable systems.

Now lets wait for the news as to how this particular cable cut occurred.

DIALLOG all set to Launch EV-DO

Diallog is a CDMA-based Local Loop operator in Islamabad/Rawalpindi area. Operating in the 450 Mhz spectrum, Diallog currently serves about 60,000 customers in the region. Diallog has been offering CDMA based 1x data since quite some time.

But now Diallog is all set to offer High Speed Data using EVDO (Evolution Data-Only). Mr Artem, the CEO, today showed us the combo Wifi/EVDO and the USB-based EVDO teminals. The EVDO can provide 2Mbps+ of downloads and 1.8Mbps of upload. On an average, a user can easliy get 500-600 Kbps of data throughput.

When this is launched, this is certainly going to become another alternative for bandwidth-hungry rambos like myself :-).

Combo EVDO / Wifi box ideal for home use. About 150 usd

USB-based EVDO terminals are also available in different forms. The problem with them is that the closer to the laptop they are, the more likely they are to decrease data speeds since the laptops are not that well shielded. If you have used PCMCIA cards for GRPS/EDGE on GSM networks (such as those from Mobilink, Telenor and the like), you will find out that their speed is not that good when you compare them with the thoughtput on the same network using a modem that is placed a bit far from your laptop.

A four-port switch is built-in as is a USB port. The unit has four antennas. Two for Wifi and two for CDMA.

USB-based EVDO terminals. True High-speed data connectivity on-the-go.

EVDO vs Wimax vs GPRS/EGDE vs FTTH

Diallog's EVDO launch is definity going to be a lucrative option for bandwidth-hungry users. Compared to the GSM operators pathetic GPRS/EDGE performance, EVDO looks promising. I'll try to get a terminal and do some testing. At the moment, I use Mobilink GPRS/EDGE which is offered for a flat Rs 500 / month (approx. usd 10) fee. Yeah, I don't pay for it...

Mobilink's GPRS/EDGE coverage is good on the Lahore-Islamabad motorway where Blackberry service is available all along the motorway. In Lahore, GPRS coverage is truly pathetic in Model Town where I live and EDGE is no where to be found in Lahore. But then for a flat 10 usd per month, this is not a bad deal. In Islamabad on EDGE, typical ping times to yahoo.com, for example, are 600ms-700ms at best and more than a second at worst.

Wimax is what I called a Future-Failure technology. No way is this technology making it to 4G. Already, due to Wateen's greatly flawed rollout of it's Motorola-based Wimax network, Mobilink has delayed the commercial launch of its Wimax rollout gearing for densely populated cities like Karachi and Lahore instead of Islamabad.

Telenor charges an exhorbitant amount of money for their EDGE connectivity since it is volume-based. So the more your usage on the internet, the higher the bill. Since the Telenor sites are all powered by newer Nokia-Siemens BTS sites, they are all EDGE enabled. I haven't had a chance to try Telenor EDGE yet.

Warid Telecom BTS sites are powered by Ericsson which is also EDGE enabled. I haven't had a chance (i.e. didn't get time) to test this yet. I will test EDGE on both of these networks soon.

Nayatel FTTH remains the unbeatable value-for-money in the market at the moment. Not because I work for Nayatel but because of the technology. On my home FTTU connection, I get 5Mbps plus of data from the internet at which all these other technologies cannot shake their stick at :-).

If you need mobility and you are based in the Islamabad region, certainly the Diallog EVDO is going to be better than the GSM data counterparts.

You might have noted that I have not mentioned PTCL's EVDO. From the looks of things, PTCL will be a dead horse within the next five years. It is unfortunate that it was sold to Etisalat which is a monopoly itself in the UAE and has no idea of what to do in a competitive market. I will do a separate piece on PTCL's EVDO.