'Using cellphones since all they did was make calls... barely'

Monday, March 21, 2005

the 'real' cellular tarrifs!

many thanks to the PTA for their effort in creating customer awareness by getting a truly surprising tariff chart in the leading newspapers today.. the chart clearly shows all the hidden costs and portrays that many of the telecom operators have been bullshitting and they advertising campaigns weren't really what they seemed to many of the consumers! it is now clearly shown that InstaXcite is the cheapest connection but with the biggest flaw a) nobody has insta and b) its based on TDMA (time divsion multiple access) so no data services and the handsets suck! Telenor the one of the new comers is amazingly even cheaper then paktel GSM which is good but then telenor doesn't have the coverage and paktel doesnt have GPRS.. but i bet Ufone surprised all of its unaware consumers including me by having so many hidden costs which makes it very expensive! within network calls seem to be OKAY but cross-network voice communication is going to rip you off!! really disappointed (although i have all the cellular company connections i still use ufone as my primary 1. Its surprising that PTA has revealed such information about Ufone which is a main subsidary of PTCL, anyway i can bet Ufone is now going to further reduce their tariff as to calm the customers down. Further more, its going to be privatised soon so hopefully the service (which isn't really what you call bad) will get better! Mobilink as usual isn't cheapest in ANY category but still is the market leader! There are 15 categories for calls and Insta leads by being the cheapest in 6 of them, Telenor is runner up with 4, Paktel with 3, Ufone with 2 and mobilink not being cheap at all! you can find the actual table and tarifs here I soon expect to see a postpaid comparison chart but from what i Know, postpaid Paktel GSM is the cheapest! Hopefully all will be clear soon and once again Thank you PTA!

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Karachi you can invest Rs. 2500/- and buy a SIM which can be programmed for 8 numbers. And we will have 5 GSM networks when Warid launches its services.

Atleast I am not going to invest that much for cheaper calls under so many constraints. So I am sticking with telenor which has indeed the simplest tariff and provide all the services that I use, don't miss the point that ufone charges Rs 5 for incoming MMS which is free on telenor.

With Warid trying to approve calls to UAE charged like local calls can be an option, but either some legal issue may prevent this or others will do something else in the competition.

4:20 AM

 
Blogger zainman said...

the sim costs Rs.2800 and can be programmed to contain upto 16 sim numbers, its called a magic sim and its available at www.beliscity.com

Well i'm going to get it soon, probably this week and then review it so i'll let you guys know how it works and if its worth the 2800!

Ufone-ufone is still cool! and Telenor isn't all that good right now. but undoubtedly telenor is the cheapest GSM provider right now!

I already have the operators except telenor and Insta since i dont want AMPS.. will also get Warid, can't wait for it! really want the competition to heat up! and a Source says that Ufone will now reduce rates in the near future.

Lets wait and see

3:29 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This www.beliscity.com is the most horrible site I have ever seen, how did you find out that they even have this magic sim?

And if I guy in saddar is selling the 8 number one for 2500 what difference does it make when we only have 5 operators? Atleast someone you can get hold of when you have a problem ;)

And in my opinion Telenor is much better than ufone, at least in voice quality, gprs reliability and cost. Now let me think what is better in Ufone I think customer support but then with telenor I never needed to call those guys :) And yes one more thing ufone has more SMS services but they do not allow hotmail or yahoo alerts which was the only thing I am interested in regarding incoming SMS.

8:55 AM

 
Blogger zainman said...

Telenor just launched becasue they wanted to avoid the $50 million fine they would have to pay and their voice quality is not much of a charm either.. i'd like to see signals on my cell first then talk about voice quality! the reception sucks and they network hasn't fully developed! the GPRS i haven't used but i doubt it will be WAY faster then Ufones.. why need sms alerts for mail when u can use GPRS for so much cheaper?

2:25 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Because receiving SMS is free, and you dont have to sign in to yahoo / hotmail to see if you got "THAT" mail. Or for mission critical servers you can get monitoring alerts rather checking every 30 seconds if everything IS fine. Well a solution could be PUSH thing like Blackberry but I guess that is not supported by anyone rite now.

8:30 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WARID FEATURES

Well i know that all this fuss about the tariff is going on. this tarrif which is being talked about was just a suggestion by an employee at WARID TELECOM to the authoroties in the first week of Feb. And his recommandations were considered, but only partially.
As we all know that in this world of competition, the tarriffs are not the most stable thing. So therefore, these rates are not applicable.
But what i do know about WARID is:

* 64K SIM cards for Postpaid
* 32K SIM cards for Prepaid

* Friends & Family Group (upto 7 members) - Half rates [CALL & SMS]

* Get any Warid number of your choice.
0345-ur previous number
Contact the Franchise office

1:43 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It would be different if more people cared.
motorola 120e data cell phone accessories

2:44 AM

 
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10:35 PM

 

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