Will PTCL slash Internet prices this 14th August?

Posted by BA on Aug 14, 2011 in Pakistan, Telecommunication | 0 comments

Here it is again, 14th August, Pakistan’s independence day. PTCL historically has been slashing Internet bandwidth prices on 14th August. I really wish they do it this time as well especially when they’re offering a 50 Mbps connection, it’ll be great to pay half the price. While their customer support and technical support has usually been a nightmare, their service just works. Just pray that you don’t get a problem in your connection and then your nightmare begins

Come on PTCL, let’s go 50% on bandwidth prices.

Get a 50 Mbps Broadband Connection on PTCL today

Posted by BA on Aug 12, 2011 in Communication, Pakistan, Telecommunication | 1 comment

No, PTCL doesn’t pay me for this but its out of sheer excitement, I just came across the least advertised but certainly available broadband connection by PTCL. We did hear about it earlier in April but now the connections are silently available. No ads, no hype and no big buzz. May be this launch is like that by design (not a home/consumer product yet?)

What do you need?

Ok, so here’s the deal. If you want a whopping 50 Mbps connection at home or at office, all you need is a pair of copper PTCL connections ( yes you need two lines), a modem/transceiver that does the magic and those PTCL guys helping you connect through the big bandwidth.

How does it work?

They call it VDSL2 Bonding technology. It’s a few steps ahead of the normal ADSL we’ve been using with additional bonding and aggregation of two copper line bandwidth to attain more than double the bandwidth. You can read more about the technology here.

How much does it cost?

There are three packages available with speeds 10 Mbps, 20Mbps and 50 Mbps and cost Rs. 9,999 , Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 20,000 respectively per month. There’s an additional (one time) installation cost of Rs. 10,000 when you get a new connection. Yes, that’s costly for a home user but may be very much affordable for small/medium businesses and corporates.

What next?

I’m looking around for anyone who has signed up for the service and will get back to you guys with a review, so stay tuned. If you or anyone you know is using this service, please do let me know.

How to get it?

Call 1236 and figure it out

Apple’s press conference – Nokia and RIM unhappy

Posted by BA on Jul 18, 2010 in Apple, BlackBerry, Competition, iPhone 4, Nokia | 4 comments

Apple on Friday released the video of their press conference. Steve Jobs has presented his case and made some good point and then demonstrated how other popular phones also loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand.

RIM and Nokia have objected the way their phones have been mentioned in this session. The press conference video shows three different phones that loose signal when held tight in the user’s hand, one of them was BlackBerry Bold 9700. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, founders and co-CEO of RIM have objected by saying that Apple is dragging RIM into their self made debacle.

Jobs also mentioned in the session that you can find pictures all over the internet of Nokia phones saying “Dont touch here”. Nokia has responded to that by saying that Nokia has spent thousands of man hours researching the way people hold their phones and they have been pioneer in making internal antenna featuring phones.

In addition to leg pulling and dragging, there were some concrete announcements in the press conference as well. Apple has announced free bumper cases to solve the antenna problem so that nobody gets to touch the metal border on iPhone 4. Moreover, Apple has also waived the return fees for unsatisfied iPhone 4 customers. These two measures are good enough, why on earth they had to be drag other phones into the scene? They’ve sold all of their phones already, haven’t they?

You can watch the Apple’s press conference video by hitting this link.

UConnect – Put all your files on the cloud

Posted by BA on Dec 12, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Go computing out there on the road with UConnect

Uconnect is probably the most revolutionary VAS that Ufone’s released ever, not only because of its feature set but its relation with the evolution of computing that will altogether transform the way we use computers and information today. The experts claim that all your computer resources that you can conceive today and can predict for tomorrow will all reside on the cloud in not so distant future. Actually we are already there with several tools emerging online.

Uconnect is our telecom sector’s contribution to the evolution. Using Uconnect, you can put all your files on the cloud and can access them anywhere, anytime using your cellphone. You can perform basic file management operations on most popular file types that we use on our PCs. You can view, send, receive emails and can even shut-down your PC remotely.

They say, a picture is better than a thousand words and I say, a video is better than a thousand pictures. So go-ahead, watch this video that shows how UConnect works. And if you decide to sign-up, simply SMS SUB to 292 and start enjoying UConnect.

Following is UConnect’s features list :

• Put and access your files on the cloud and make them always-accessible.
• Supports doc, xls, ppt, pdf, jpg and other popular formats that you can view right on your wap browser.
• Access one or more of your machines’ file system live (obviously when your PC is online).
• Cut/copy/paste/delete files remotely both from the cloud and your machine.
• Basic PC tasks like restart, shut-down, sleep and hibernate can be done right from your phone
• Last but not least, use PUSH EMAIL on up to 5 of your email accounts. This all works on SMS. You get SMS for each incoming email and you can read and reply emails.

To know more about the product, please visit http://uconnect.ufone.com

Ufone Launches UConnect

Posted by BA on Aug 12, 2009 in Uncategorized | 10 comments

Today, Ufone has announced the launch of a very interesting service named UConnect. The service allows you to use your cellphone to control several activities on your PC. In addition to remote PC access the service combos Push-Email-over-SMS as well. It may sound a bit complex but in my initial experience I find the service very easy-to-use. No downloads and installation required on phone, no complex configurations, no issue of proxies and firewalls on your pc, in short, if you have data enabled phone, it’ll work just fine. Following is the list of main features of UConnect:

• Remote file access: You can access the files on your PC remotely. No download required on your phone and it all works on the mobile-browser.
• Remote access to your Outlook emails: Access your MS-Outlook emails on the go using the mobile-browser
• PC control: Allows you to restart, shutdown, hibernate, sleep and log off your machine.
• Multiple PC remote access: Above three features can be used on more than one PCs
• Push Email: Sends you SMS and Wap-Push notifications for every incoming email and you can configure up to 5 email accounts with it. You can even use it on a non-smart phone.
• 512 MB web-space: Each user will be allocated 512 MB space on the server.

How to subscribe?

Simply SMS SUB to 292 to sign up for the service.

How it works

• You can access the service on the phone by visiting http://uconnect.ufone.com on their mobile browser. Once signed up you can login and configure push email from here.
• You can download UConnect client software to be installed on your PC from http://uconnect.ufone.com that allows remote access on your phone.

Please download the user manual for further details.

Anticipation

I’ll come back on this blog with a detailed review of the product, its features and price later, but right now I’m really excited about this product. File sharing, remote file and PC access is something that has not been available earlier, at least as a VAS in Pakistan. Moreover, Push Email over SMS is a service that targets a big number of users and will help bring Email access to masses.

Please wait for the detailed review to follow.