BLOG DE HASIBUL ISLAM

There has been a lot of discussion on qubee’s package prices. Many said – it was too high for many of them. Anyone who wanted to avail qubee needed to pay atleast around 1500 taka (For 256kbps).

The good news is that qubee is offering more packages targeting new user groups like students. Their “Campus” package is a very good 1.




*Qubee Campus 128 package offers 128 kbps connectivity at 850 Taka (+VAT = 977.5 Taka).
*Qubee Campus 256 package offers 256 kbps connectivity at 850 Taka (+VAT = 977.5 Taka) but with a 5 GB Data transfer limitation.

I think these two packages are more vibrant and will attract many new users for them. BanglaLion also has offers at a very affordable rate, but they couldn’t yet cover a significant amount of geographic location with their network coverage, and thus can’t provide their services to mass people.

Qubee could well understand their lacking in business policy making. Their product design was not successful initially. They came up with more flexible packages later on. But still they found that Bangladeshi people are not responding well enough with their packages capped with data transfer limit. They are now offering two new packages withdrawing all previous offers of 256 & 512 kbps. The current packages are as follows:





Source: Qubee website

Initially the packages seemed very lucrative to me compared to many other available options in the market. I became curious and called the qubee hotline to know more about it. I asked the qubee representative what actually they tried to mean by “Fair Usage Policy”. They answered me that If some one’s usage is very high, they are going to warn the user at a certain point. This means with 256/512 kbps speed, if someone downloads continuously qubee is  going to “WARN” you that your usage is violating “FAIR USAGE POLICY”. Then I asked whether they are going to impose any restriction if someone violates the Fair usage policy. They answered me that the packages offer unlimited usage and they are not going to impose any restriction. Then finally I asked them what if someone continues to download violating the fair usage policy and the warning? To be honest they didn’t answer this question of mine directly.

What this means is that they will probably reduce the bandwidth after some time. This is not an old practice in Bangladesh. We have seen GrameenPhone/Citycell offering unlimited internet packages and after few days their throughput (Speed) going down when the number of subscriber went high. This will probably happen to qubee customers also.  These ISPs are there for business. The cost of dedicated 256/512 kbps is way higher than what qubee offers. 512 kbps dedicated bandwidth (through submarine cable) costs 9 thousand taka (1 mbps = 18 thousand taka). Qubee is offering it with 2250 taka.  I’ll leave the rest to your understanding.

The second WiMAX operator has started its journey in Bangladesh. As far as I could learn from Banglalion’s website, they are offering their services in selected areas of Dhaka City. But definitely they’ll spread out soon. Their offers are cheaper than the first operator – Augere (QUBEE). But they couldn’t get out of the download cap too like qubee. Their offers are as follows:





• 300tk activation fee applies (waive with 1 year sign up)
• Additional Usage Tk. 0.15/MB
• All charges are excluding VAT

Source: BanglaLion Website.

BanglaLion is offering three types of connectivity:

1. Connectivity through outdoor unit (costs 10000 taka, supports upto 6 users)
2. Connectivity through indoor unit (costs 7000 taka, supports upto 6 users)
3. Connectivity through WiMAX Dongle (A pen drive like device for single user)

Their offer’s are more diversified than Qubee. Currently they are offering 9 packages with different Bandwidth and download caps.

They are infact a step ahead than qubee by offering speeds upto 5 mbps. I hope BanglaLion’s entry will initiate a competition between the two operators and will ultimately bring out some really cool offers for their clients.

As soon as any audio album is released in Bangladesh – it is available for download in many Bangladeshi audio/video download sites. Drama and movies are also available for download in these sites within a very short time. This is causing a real time irreversible damage to the Bangladeshi Audio/Video industry. BTRC, understanding the fact, has taken an initiative to shutdown/block numbers of websites to protect the industry. I know this will annoy us a bit as we download our favourite music, drama or movies from these sites for free. But I personally believe that this will help our audio/video industry to flourish more – related people will be benefitted and will be encouraged more to create better things in future. Many of the audio/video production companies have complained to BTRC (from Confidential Sources) and have reported against numbers of websites that are allowing to download those companies’ materials illegally without their consent.

I am not sure how far BTRC can move, but publishers of these websites will definitely look for alternatives. May be some new beneficial groups will emerge in different forms.

It seems that Augere could learn something from the responses they got from their initial packages. They’ve refined their offers and it seems that they’ve started understanding what people want from them. Current packages are as follows:

Source: Qubee website

Even the modem price has gone down. This was required for them to compete against the existing wireless (or mobile) internet service providers. But they couldn’t get out of the volume based offers. Five (5) Gigabytes for 1250 taka is still high. If they want to get the attention of mass internet users they need to offer something for less than 700 taka with minimum 10 GB data transfer.

Download this template designed by myself:

I recently encountered a problem with a Joomla website which had VirtuMart in it. I moved the whole joomla site from a demo server to an active server with the actual domain pointing to it. Everything worked fine as I did the required changes in the configuration.php of the joomla folder. But the VirtueMart component was still pointing to the old demo server path. I then googles a bit and found a very good solution. I changed the config file of the virtuemart component located at:

/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/virtuemart.cfg.php

The following two paths need to be changed with the new path:

1. define( ‘URL’, ‘http://demoserverURL/joomlafolder/’ );
2. define( ‘SECUREURL’, ‘http://demoserverURL/joomlafolder/‘ );

Instead of the “demoserverLink/joomlafolder” use your actual joomla folder link.

You might face a new problem while doing this. If you are using ftp to download the file “virtuemart.cfg.php” and re-upload it with the changed path, you may get an “Permission Denied” error. There is a good solution for this too. Install a joomla component named “Extplorer” or “JoomlaXplorer“. This component is a joomla admin panel component that gives you the power to upload/delete/edit files in the joomla site. After installing any one of these two components just browse through the file and edit the above mentioned two lines of the “virtuemart.cfg.php” file.

I could get rid of the problem this way, I hope the solution will be useful for anyone facing the same problem.

Atlast the WiMAX service is on AIR for the consumers of Bangladesh ( specifically for the people in Gulshan, Dhaka ). It has been more than a year several companies got WiMAX operator license in Bangladesh. People of Bangladesh has been biting nails and waiting for a superspeed connectivity. Well they have it now. But is it like what people expected? Augere Wireless Broadband started providing their service with the name: QUBEE. I have gone through their website and I was seriously disappointed with the packages that were there in their website.

People were expecting for a super fast connectivity with no restriction of internet usage.

Source: QUBEE Website

Do you really think these two packages can penetrate the ISP market in Bangladesh (or perhaps in Dhaka)? Are we not familiar with similar services already? Citycell launched Mobile highspeed Internet service months ago. Let’s look at their package:

Source: Citycell Website

Are the Qubee packages any special different from the Citycell’s offer? If mobility is the key issue I will say Citycell will be a better choice here due to their wide coverage area.  Otherwise there are many ISPs providing bandwidth to home/corporate users which are much cheap compared to Qubee.

Now let’s do some math. 1 mbps = 1/8 mBps. That is, in 1 minute you’ll be able to download 60/8 = 7.5 Mega Bytes. In 1 hour : 450 Mega Bytes. In this rate Qubee’s offered 9 GB will take 20 Hours to be consumed. If you download 10 DivX Movies (around 700 MB each) you’ll be able to consume the whole data Volume.  6200 taka data plan consumed in 10 Movie Downloads!! 620 taka per movie!! Really damn smart packages. I know people will say these are corporate bandwidth and are not supposed to be used for movie downloading. Well, what is the basic difference then?

Let’s consider my home Internet connection in home user’s category. I pay 1650 taka to Xnet for a 288 kbps connection. I get 30 KB (yes you are right, it’s Kilo Byte). At this rate I can download 2.6 GB per day and believe me my ISP doesn’t apply any cap on usage. Literally I can download 78 GB in exchange for 1650 taka only. Compare it with what Qubee is offering.

Now let’s consider the corporate needs. Corporate offices need seemless minimum guaranteed bandwidth for their operations. Now a days renowned ISPs charge around 14 thousand taka for 512 kbps and around 20 thousand taka for 1 mbps connection. That sounds too much compared to Qubee – isn’t it? Noooo… With the 512kbps/1mbps connections from the ISPs you can download in continuous 512kbps/1mbps for the whole month and the ISP is bound to ensure that. Now you can download for 720 hours with these ISPs at 512kbps/1mbps – compared to Qubee’s 20 Hours.

Why is Qubee charging so much!!! is this because of the WiMAX technology?? If that’s the benefit we were talking about WiMAX then I really doubt if it will be accepted by our Internet users or not. If Internet mobility is the issue, then I can say these types of mobile Highspeed internet was already there for quite a long time (ie, Accesstel’s NLOS technology, Grameen Phone’s 236 kbps Internet and Citycell’s 512 kbps Internet). If a new company launches its services with a new technology – A Buzz is required to penetrate the existing market. People will not accept this rubbish offer just to enjoy a new technology. Because when we buy or pay for anything we actually buy the services of what we are buying. Service is the important issue here. If the new technology doesn’t provide any better service, then either the company hasn’t utilized the technology perfectly or the technology itself is not efficient. But since WiMAX is running in other countries successfully we can say that Qubee’s business plan with WiMAX service is not perfect.

GoodLuck Qubee…

Hasibul Islam

23/10/09

http://hasibul.info/blog

I was planning for this post for a long time. I am a big fan of the software named: Sygate Personal Firewall.

It gives a powerful and easy to use firewall along with a bandwidth meter to monitor the upload and download speed. You can view 4 types of logs – Traffic, security, packet and system logs.

The packet log is very helpful to understand from where and to where packets are coming and going to respectively. It will show the destination IP along with the mac address of that IP device. You can also get the IPs of the sites you are visiting. You can view the packet types (UDP/TCP/IP etc).

It is a great tool to monitor the bandwidth (Upload/download speed).

You can control the applications and software that wants the internet connectivity. You can allow or deny access for individual application. You can even entirely block access or allow all to all the applications.

Options:

I have been using this for years and recommended to many of my friends who are aware of computer security along with bandwidth monitoring facility. I would like to recommend you also. Usage of this might seem a bit disturbing at the beginning as it will often prompt for your permission on whether it should allow or block the applications that want network/internet access.

I bet if you start using it, you’ll start liking it to. And at a certain time it will become a primary application that your PC will need. You can download the application

You can download Sygate Personal Firewall from this link.

There is no doubt that- our nation is progressing. Our GDP is going up, our Average income is going up, our economy is growing and our live style is improving. Our improved lifestyle is creating even more demand on our resources. We are using them more rapidly then ever before. As a result we are running out of these resources even more rapidly. Are we aware of this?

I remember, there was no scarcity of water in our area even 3/4 years back. Now, I am getting used to No-Water condition as literally the water supply has gone dramatically down. There are two main reasons for this. Number 1 is the Water Layer – which has gone so down that the water pumps can hardly pull out water from the deep. The second reason is the Electricity problem – which it self is a problem and will be discussed in the later part of this article. Again we are responsible for both the reasons. Our ever growing demand is forcing the water authority to pump even more water, on the other hand we are reducing the natural water basin which lets the water from the surface to go down to fill up the water that we are consuming by pumping up. The city is getting covered by the bitumen surfaces and concrete layers.

Discussing the 2nd reason of water crisis will bring up even another more important problem that are facing – yes I meant “Electricity Problem”. In last few years a big number of new electricity users were introduced whereas the total production of electricity has gone down. I think there are two major reasons for Electricity problem. The first one was the lack of future vision and no-maintenance, because of which no new electricity generation was added, moreover it has gone down due to power stations going down due to lack of overhauling services. The second reason is that the resources upon which Electricity production depends, are in scarce situation itself. Examples are – Water level drop in Kaptai lake which is the largest hydroelectric power plant in Bangladesh, the supply shortages of Natural gas – using which many of the power station run. The water level drop can be identified as natural disaster, but the gas problem is again ignited by the misuse of it by us. We burn more than 10 cubic meter gas for our car at a cost of only 160-170 taka every day- which is enough for cooking burner to run for more than a month. Just imagine how quickly we are burning our resources. The rate at which we are burning our natural gas will cause running out of it within less than a decade. What are we going to do then? No Gas means, no fertilizer – no Electricity. We can understand what no fertilizer means, but what about no electricity? No electricity means, no irrigation- no water – no industrialization – no development. Are we really aware of the future we are heading?
We can’t change our fate overnight but we can try atleast. We have to be very careful about using our resources and should try all possible ways to save as much as we can. If we are not awakened soon, this dreadful situation will welcome the ultimate nightmare for us.

BaKeDCaKeD
1 am, 26th April 2009.

also available at: NSUers.com