New Year Promotions.
first of all HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone..With the new year, The telecom companies are coming up with new year promotions and the first thing which have grabbed my attention currently is the reduction in price of all mobile to mobile calls for the first few days of 2007.
DHIRAAGU have announced that from 31st December to 3rd of January; Postpaid customers can talk at 0.90 Rf per minute. Prepaid customers can talk at 0.99 Rf per minute.Note: * both fnf nominated numbers at 0.77rf for Postpaid and 0.84 for Pre paid.
* Applicable to same network calls
WATANIYA have announced that on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of January from Midnight till 1am, all call charges will be reduced by HALF. Postpaid customers can talk to as low as 0.28 Rf per minute Prepaid customers can talk to as low as 0.35 Rf per minute.Note: * Applicable to same network calls.
* Price will vary between different talk plans
ROL Back Online
This is just to inform that ROL is back online and working fine. However more questions still await to be answered... like.. is this permanent? is everything fixed? where does ROL go from here? do they change their service structure? what if somethign happens tommorow? do all customers still need to pay the full monthly bill this time around as well ? anyway... i'm not being too harsh on them. we shoud actually give them credit as well. The service have been restored within almost 3 days time. so thank you for that *with a pat on the back* !
ROL - Focus Infocom Internet Services DOWN!!!
It has come to out attention that ROL ( Raaje Online provided by Focus Infocom) services are currently down.The services seem to have affected ROL's ability to provide internet services to the country. Currently it is being reported they are unable to provide internet access to any of their customers.
In addition to this wataniya , who has teamed up with ROL for their data services ( GPRS and WAP) are also unable to provide their customers with internet access.
Dhiraagu's connection is still up, possibly due to multiple connections they have in place to the internet backbone. That being said there are some issues connecting to Singapore and south/east Asian sites with Dhiraagu as well.
The cause of this outage is being attributed to the Taiwanese earthquakes that struck yesterday. Internet service in Asia slowed down after three earthquakes hit southern Taiwan yesterday according to (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYHaxhLE4rr0&refer=home) and could possibly take weeks to repair those links.
taken from http://www.internettrafficreport.com , the graphs below show that Asia region's connectivity has deteriorated to a very bad state.
ISP's, Banks, and other Institutions with rely on the internet for it's operations have been affected in the region
Although the cause of the problem was a natural disaster, it is evident which ISP is better prepared for a situation like this. Dhiraagu is also be affected but the impact is minimal compared to Focus Infocom's ROL services.
Is it a better indication of who is a better ISP? Remains to be seen.
DSCN project cost USD 20 or 27 million?
Nail Down Your Connection Speed!! Dhiraagu Unlimited Package Review
So it has been a while since Dhiraagu released its "Unlimited" adsl package. The first package from dhiraagu to be so. Many of us were very excited about the package being launched and rushed to sign up screaming "weeeeee... unlimited internet.... finally!! "......oh how wrong were we!!!
Dhiraagu's old 256kbps home user package the 'baraboa' one supposedly had a contention of 1:200 as so it was mentioned on dhiraagu's website as well as TAM. the new Unlimited package is supposed to have a contention of 1:75 according to TAM (http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=69) of coz the lower the contention the less sharing is done between users... well at least thats the way it usually is. wonder if i have this all wrong.
i do know dhiraagu has been very explicitly stating that the connection speed is not guaranteed.... no kidding!!!??? the connection i try to use seems to have a data cap set on it!!! or maybe its just my imagination.......
the above is just for HTTP downloads, starting at 1 something in the AM going on till well 7 AM. reason i used HTTP is, coz its most likely that all other protocols will be limited or http will be prioritized. i donno wat. but the fact of the matter is using a few download accelerators , coupled with normal http downloads pointed at different ends of the web, i've been tryin to sqeeze my connection to the limit. somehow it seems to be stuck at 30Mega Bytes per hour or less... it just dosent seemt to go any higher? is this just me or anyone else tried it?
hmm lets seee it usually averages around 28-30 per hour so.. lets jus say 29 MB as an average...(up and down)
29MB x 1024 = 29696KB x 8 = 237568 kbits / hour
237568kbits / 3600 seconds =
65.99kbps.... or 8.24 Kbytes /sec
(probably around 64kbps if you account for uploads)did i get that right? any calculation errors? my bit to byte converter might be a bit rusted but if i got that right the average connection speed i get is around 64kbps
i donno.... is it just happening to me? does it seem fair to advertise a package as 256/64 when the average speed one receives is around 64kbps....
non guaranteed or not!! this isn't exactly any better than what focus used to offer.... and isn't useful for nythin other than surfing or chatting... if thats your cup of tea.. then ur better off with the 1GB baraboa package as its unlikely ur gonna exceed the usage with browsing or chatting, plus it's faster..
anythin more than that, like skyping, webcam, jus too slow to be even bloody useful......
well dhiraagu, jus have to say it's a disappointing package. but guys with enuf patience can put on their download accelerator shoes and maybe skim a few gigs of data off a month.... (don't even bother with torrents.... protocols other than HTTP seem to be on some limiter)
Dhiraagu's Fibre Optic Cable or Submarine Satellite?
Yesterday was supposed to be a memorable day for all of us… do I need to say it again? … ok if u say so..
Yeah DHIRAAGU ( dhivehi – raajeyyge –gulhun) supposedly launched the first submarine cable in Maldives… happy aren’t we? But for what…. Yes, for cheaper and more superior quality service… and I’m not saying Dhiraagu’s submarine cable is not going to take any of those away from us… hopefully, a submarine cable is got to do what a submarine cable’s got to do right?
Ok back to my point… I just want to take notice on some minute details I came across in the whole launching of it..
Did it really happen? Did the first call made via the submarine cable get disconnected TWICE?
Ok… it did really happen… and think abt it.. if I did not know any better I would be saying.. “ is this the quality submarine cable brings?” … coz I can call a friend of mine in Singapore on my skype phone on dialup and still have a better conversation..
Something bothered me and I tried to get a bit more information and it came to my attention that the call was NOT made through cable BUT via SATELLITE… but they said it was fibre optic cables at the end of each sentence eh… and after calling 123 numerous times last night.. and got hold of her (after waiting IN LINE for 10 minutes) at around 2045hrs.I was even able to get the lady over there to agree with me on this as well…
So how come Dhiraagu “so called” launched a product which did not really exist in the first place… I mean yeah they have the cable in Maldives now and it’s going to work as well for sure… but just because Wataniya was going to launch their cable sometime soon , Dhiraagu wanted to FAKE a whole event JUST to TOUCH MALDIVES first.
Hopefully Dhiraagu’s services will be able to make best use of the fiber optic cables soon, but today at this second.. I don’t think so… throughout the whole ceremony they were only able to say.. WE WILL, WE CAN, WE COULD and more of WE WILL… but there was not a single WE HAVE…. Mere speculation, which in fact would mostly be true to be honest.. but as a customer I would have loved to see something there…. ( but remember… its not fully functional so can’t happen)
Anyway back to the point… having a ceremony saying “official launch of the Submarine Cable” and not showing us anything of the submarine cable.. and faking a whole conversation with the president, claiming it was the first call made through the cable abroad, while in reality it was a normal satellite call.. it’s a bit funny isn’t it…
It’s not funny actually.. it’s just another tactic to ‘andhun alhuvaning” the general public… simple as that ..
