Archive for May 23rd, 2008

Wateen Billing Issue: Charging Line Rent Against Its Promise?

Published by Babar Bhatti on May 23, 2008 under Broadband Internet, Consumer Rights, Government Regulations, Telecommunications, Wimax

Salman Munir writes at Green & White about his unexpected high bill from Wateen. The reason? the bill included line rent which should have been zero according to Wateen’s campaign. For background see posts about Wateen’s tarrifs and product launch.

I very clearly remember their sales representative (wateen’s, not franchise) hammering it on my head that, I would only be charged Rs. 1350/- Per Month for a 512KB /10GB cap package. And for that I was required to give 11 months post-dated cheques and first month in advance with equipment cost. Now, if you look at exhibit A, they have managed to bring out Rs. 891.50 worth of charges, i’m liable to pay.

Its the 3rd billing month and this is the first bill i’m receiving. What’s interesting to note is the line rent for telephone service, their IVR hold music also very clearly announces “telephony services for ZERO line rent!”

I was not yet satisfied with their falsified claims by Wateen’s support staff about why they are charging me Rs. 1350 and every billboard out their announcing that I should be paying Rs. 799/- for the same. Now, they have sent me unjustified bill.

What you guys think about Wateen’s policies? Do we, consumer have any say in this? What we, as consumers can do about it?

Open Source Programmable GPS Devices

Published by Babar Bhatti on May 23, 2008 under Entrepreneurship, Gadgets, Linux, Location Based Services, Mobile Applications, Personal Navigation Devices

I believe these kind of hardware+software mashups to be very relevant to next generation of location based services and telecom industry. Here’s a video from 2008 O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference, the meeting place for upcoming location based services. This talks about a set of open-source hardware modules which can be connected together and programmed to interact as desired - for example to create a proximity-based to-do list. There is more information available at conference proceedings page.