As a long time user of the Internet in Pakistan, and having thrown tons of money your way, I write today out of frustration with every single Internet service available today in Pakistan. I am talking specifically about internet for personal usage, not corporate services which are priced well out of the reach of home users. Continue reading ‘An open letter to all Pakistani ISP’s’
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So much has been written about outsourcing that it’s picked up a lot of hubris in people’s mind. The west calls it outsourcing and fears that they are hemorrhaging jobs out of their countries, while the countries doing the outsourced work look upon at it as some sort of manna from the heaven which will enable them to pull off a Cinderella story. Continue reading ‘Article on Outsourcing for Spider Magazine’
Two interesting posts on internet governance in Pakistan:
I have always wondered what exactly PKNIC (the registrar for .pk domains) works. It’s still not very clear to me, but these posts shed some light on the matter.
Internet usage in the country has witnessed a tremendous increase during the last couple of years with its users reaching a record number of 12 million.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which were concentrating in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad have now extended their services in other cities as well and this service is currently available in more than 2389 cities and towns in Pakistan. #
12 million is an impressive number, but since so many of these users are on dialup connections which hardly work, it’s got to be taken with a pinch of salt. Dialup can work well, but the state of PTCL phone lines means in most places it’s pathetically slow. Still, internet usage is increasingly widespread. I was recently in the Soan Valley, and had to give some pictures to an NGO there. I assumed they didn’t have internet there, and asked for their postal address. They guy looked at me like I was a backwards hick from another planet, and said “Postal? Postal? Here, take my email address”. (translated from urdu).
This is brilliant news - WiMAX networks are cheap enough that internet prices should finally tumble - I expect the upcoming WiMAX networks will undercut all the existing players. Wateen’s recent advertisement “Bridging the Digital Divide” indicates that the pricing will be reasonabe. Not only that, it will provide internet access to entire cities in one go, instead of the current bits and pieces.
For a good overview of the upcoming Wimax networks, see the “the first issue of MuniWireless Magazine”:http://www.muniwireless.com/assets/docs/mwm_premier.pdf, a free 6.8 meg pdf download. It includes a complete overview of “WiMAX”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax networks, of which it seems that at least 3 are being put up in the near future in Pakistan.
They are listed below in the order of their expected launch. Continue reading ‘Wimax Comes to Town!’
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