Archive for June 15th, 2009

PTCL EVO: The Way Wireless Broadband Should Be

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 15, 2009 under 3G, Broadband Internet, CDMA, EDGE, Emerging Markets Telecom, ICT, Internet, PTCL, Telecommunications

For Rs.2000 per month you can have blazing fast Internet on the go from PTCL EVO service. There’s a one time cost of Rs 6000 (USB) or Rs 4000 (PCMCIA card) . If you have a land line you pay the broadband charges with the land line bill, otherwise pay at PTCL One Stop Shops or Customer Service Centers. Limited availability for the broadband speeds – Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi – for now. But the lower speed CDMA version is available in other areas. Here’s what PTCL says:

You can use this service in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi & Mirpur for broadband while traveling. Your Evdo automatically switches to 1 X in non Evdo Coverage areas. Which means you can also use internet everywhere in Pakistan where there is Vfone 1900MHz network. Please note that in non Evdo coverage areas your internet will be connected on lower speed (153Kbps). PTCL provides a very large coverage area where you can stay connected.

For more information including caveats and support for your operating system, look at the main EVO service page and the FAQ page. As usual the service has been getting reviews ranging from great to average. But overall I think PTCL has a winner with EVO, if they can sustain the performance and service.

Here’s a teaser from the review by TechLahore.

I got a sleek looking, black EV-DO wireless USB dongle with an extensible antenna, that happens to go perfectly with my T60. The dongle has a built USB storage, so all I had to do was plug it in and the setup program started… from the dongle itself! Pretty cool. It took me about 5 minutes to run through the install, and boom! I was in business. My first stop was google.com, which loaded instantly. I could already see the difference in performance but I decided to measure it a little more objectively. Speedtest.net is always handy for that.

Nokia Life tools launched in India

Published by Basit Ali on June 15, 2009 under Mobile Applications, Mobile Content, Nokia

A cross post from Basit’s Blog

Nokia life tools have been running as a pilot in Indian state of Maharashtra. Nokia has announced the commercial launch of these tools in Maharashtra today. This service will run in this state for now and will spread further to the other parts of the country later. Life-tools is a combination of entertainment, information, education and agriculture services in the emerging markets.

The idea is to have applications running on common, low cost phones that is owned by the greater number of users in small towns and remote areas and the focus of the applications is to make the life of the users easier one way or another.

Here are a few shots from the agriculture related application. You can have more information about these applications here.

The biggest challenge in such cases is to bring information and updates to the users from the very local market and the changes should reflect the happenings around them, for example market prices, weather, irrigation related details etc.

That is why the service has been launched in a limited area, and will grow over time. Nokia has recently been concentrating on these so-called emerging markets like India and Pakistan where the telecom market has been growing exponentially resulting in very high sales of handsets.