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Wi-Tribe is a joint venture between Qatar Telecom and A.A. Turki Corporation for Trading and Contracting (ATCO), which is offering Clearwire’s wimax technology and services to Jordan and (soon) to Pakistan.
In Pakistan, this is the brand that will emerge out of the acquisition of majority stake in Burraq Telecom that occurred more than a year ago. Globally though, their website suggests that they have some interesting plans of tying together the global community of their userbase.
They are hiring very heavily for their PK operations right now, which tells me go-live is probably another 6 months away if not more, but lets see what they can bring to our fledgling wimax market.
If you have any more news about the company, do share.
| Written by Osama A. on 06/26/08 in Telecom |
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June 26th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Another Wateen?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
could be a competitor of Wateen & Mobilink wimax in future - lets c their strategy to capture the market as they r hopefully launching the services before the end of this year.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:07 am
well i think wimax is a very expensive technology.. until and unless the packages are near to what ptcl/worldcall/linkdonet are providing … these companies will end up no where…
lets hope for the best…
June 27th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Well to be honest I am not sure what goodness will this new company bring except for that part that I like their logo at least!
Wimax by Wateen has been a total slap in the face of all the enthusiasts (including myself) and now lets see what does this company do!
June 27th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Any scene of 3G in Pakistan?
June 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
nope no 3g..any idea where and how many cities they are goin to launch in?
June 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Recently I got an email from Brightspyre for openings at Wi-tribe that states like this:
“In 2007, wi-tribe limited acquired a local telecom operator in Pakistan in line with its objective of becoming a top broadband player in the region. wi-tribe Pakistan limited will start state-of-the-art wireless broadband services in Pakistan by end of 2008.
wi-tribe Pakistan’s objective is to provide cutting edge broadband technology to the Pakistani market which is still looking for an internet service which can meet its quality expectations. Till the end of 2007, broadband penetration was very low in Pakistan due to lack of awareness, affordability, availability, and quality issues. wi-tribe Pakistan will provide this untapped market with superior quality, value additions, and excellent customer service.”
And Job openings for some 40 Job title’s were advertised below mostly in Islamabad and some in all 3 places Lahore, Isloo and Karachi. I think with this massive hiring they will be starting from big cities and will go to all over Pakistan.
I hope it replaces wateen (sorry yateem :P) with some quality wi-max :).
Cheers!
June 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Witribe is a Wimax Operator aiming for the Fixed Wireless Market. Currently 4 cities are planned, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, with most of the sites coming up in Karachi (not covering the whole city). Currently they are aiming for coverage and their standard is pretty amazing considering other WiMAX operators.
My personal experience suggests that it will offer extremely good service, which would probably be by the end of 2008 or the start of 2009.
If I was you, I won’t hold my breath
June 27th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Spark - thats what everyone was saying about Wateen … that “their experience” was that it would be extremely good etc etc.
I think over time either we’ve become cynical or stopped believing hype.
I’ll see when it launches, which is still a while away
June 27th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
‘my experience’ of working with a ‘Wi-Tribe’ vendor suggests that Wi-Tribe has done its homework, unlike Wateen, and knows what it is getting into!! Plus, the QOS it is trying to achieve are pretty nice
So I say ‘be positive’
but yes ‘expecting too much’ from a new company is never a good idea!!
June 27th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Sure Spark but what I meant was that Wateen vendors were saying the same thing before its launch…?
2Mbps internet at Rs.400 was what they claimed. High QoS they claimed. Completely reshape the future of the telecom industry they claimed. The future is green they claimed…. well that part was right.
I’m not suggesting malintent or hyperbole - just that every company starts off with the noblest of goals - priorities change over time after deadlines slip.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
They are going for the same vendor (Motorolla) as Wateen, Don’t think the result will be any different unless the vendor produces some improvements in their product.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Osama you have to realize that WiMAX is a new technology and it is in its evolutionary state… The technology would become better as the system matures and looking at the way things are coming up I’m sure that WiMAX systems would become better and offer reliable services in near future.
hopefully by the end of 08 we’ll see better HDR networks with reliable products!!
@Farrukh
Wateen Deployed products which were WiMAX wave1 supported, Burraq’s deployment would support WiMAX wave2 supported equipment. This means better results, WiMAX forum says that…
plus Motorola is the best Wimax Vendor out there, no other vendors gives the results and the variety of products even close to what Motorola offers…
I say ‘wait and see’ is the best strategy!
June 27th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
well they came with high investment & expectations and in order to survive in pakistani market, they have to provide quality services otherwise their name would be replaced as run-tribe; in addition to an intreting name given to wateen as yateem
They are currently hiring through www.brightspyre.com and newspaper ads-
June 30th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Well Spark,
I disagree with you as far as quality of Motorolla Wimax product series is concerned. Search the market you will find a lot better, fully featured WiMAX products. I can name a few:
Redline
Aperto
Airspan
You can compare the specs by yourself, by no means there product is best; in fact its the support they provide as a vendor for the operator which makes them the ultimate choice. Take the analogy of Microsoft compared to Linux, you will understand what I mean.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:37 am
It is my understanding that they will be using Airspan’s products for this rollout, not Clearwire’s. Take a look at their website and you will see the Airspan PR.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am
Farrukh,
Quality and being fully loaded with features are two separate things. I have used redline’s products as well and they aren’t as good as they look on their spec sheets. Field testing would confirm this. I haven’t used Aperto or Airspan’s Wimax products but I think that they would be comparable.
I agree with you on the services part thou, Motorola’s Support infrastructure is much better as compared to the other three.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:36 am
Spark,
You are certainly right that wi-tribe has done its homework. What I have heard from the market is that wi-tribe is doing a much better network planning with a good QoS. They are very focused and want to deliver a service they promise to their customers.
Recently, Clearwire, Sprint, Google, and Intel formed a new joint venture worth $14.5 billion to expand Wimax operations in USA and Europe. With such big names investing in Wimax, the future for Wimax is very bright. Clearwire has already launched Wimax services in USA, Mexico, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Poland and Romania. The following link talks about the new Wimax venture:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,145585-page,1-c,mobilebroadband/article.html
July 1st, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Spark,
Its nice to hear you have tested Redline, you must have been impressed by its strong PHY-Layer, which to me stands out as best even better than Aperto, which offers awesome amount of features within a single CPE.
But the point is we are not comparing products over here, Its not our job anyway, its the operators choice after all.
But the point is, its the early bad image put by Wateen in deploying Wimax thats causing these performance concerns. Motorola people seems to have upgraded their old Canopy (FWA) and sold it to Wateen, and fooled people with Wimax when their wimax product was probably not ready.
Even till this time they are finalizing their product by removing bugs, what will people have to do with QUALITY if the technology doesn’t offer the features it promises to?
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I beleive the real war is of content not for who would lay the intfrastructure to carry it..
But I m exited to see the consistant intreset of foreign investors in Pakistan even though we r lacking political and economical stability.
Mohsin J.
www.zumbeel.net
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
umm is Green and White at all aware abt Mobilink Infinity?Osama u are supposed to be on top of things here?how come no review or ne thing?
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Rashad - I wrote about it recently.
http://telecompk.net/2008/07/02/mobilink-infinity-arrives-initial-offering-in-karachi/
July 4th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I hope if they start the service in Kasur City.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I hope the competition between Wateen and Witribe would bring cost down a bit
July 5th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
If WiMAX is here to stay then cost has to go down.. no other option i m afraid..
July 6th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
well i used CLEARWIRE services in Ireland (Clearwire is a partner company wo WITRIBE) clear wire is shit.. am telling you..
July 12th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Share the Job Openings with us
see if we are eligible for it?
July 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am
@Madiha- They have advertised their jobs on news paper and BrightSpyre (around 90 positions) http://brightspyre.com/opening - but i think you are bit late now because jobs are already been expired.
but you can visit their website career section, they still hav listed the same jobs, give a try.. n best of luck
http://wi-tribe.pk/careers.php?PHPSESSID=9fca088c72b9ea4749026d9834b4636d
July 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Wimax market in pakistan is expected to get more saturated in the near future. No doubt ‘Wateen’ has left a negative mark in customer’s mind; that’s the reason no one is expecting too big out of it. But i hope, after addition of more operators like Mobilink (expected to launch next month), Wi-tribe and UK-based company Augere (that took over Tele-card). This would sum up more competition and surely will lower down the tarriff to a great deal.
For 3G in Pakistan, PTA will launch 3G license (hopefully) by this year end. I can see a couple of 3G networks operational by end of 2009 and customers enjoying IMS services even before that! In short, Paki-telecom market is going no where for another 3 years, atleast!!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
There are too many CDMA operators in Paksiatn and i wonder why these operators are not offering broadband services through EVDO. I think it would be more effecient and cost effective solution to provide broadband services with minimal additional cost instead of going for Wi-Max.
I am working with subsidiary of Etisalat in Sudan and have launched broadband services by using our existing CDMA network resources with simple up-gradation with downlink speed of 3.1mbps and uplink 1.8mbps. We are market leader in broadband sector.The price for unlimited usage package is arround USD 40 per month.
The cost of operation in Sudan is quite high and i believe that these CDMA operators can offer the same services in Pakistan with price tag of USD 15 per month.
August 6th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Just wait till launch of witribe…. u will see the huge service difference between mobilink, wateen and witribe
August 8th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Positive Blogging! Share Your Opinions, Don’t Pull Your Roots
I have witnessed several bloggers putting down the wimax culture in Pakistan, whether its being provided by Wateen or Mobilink, they all hate it and are constantly campaigning to abolish latest marketing, business and innovative trends from Pakistan.
Well, I know wimax is a very expensive service and not everyone is able to afford it, but it is an innovative application, people. It needs to flourish cause it holds numerous advantages for us.
I’m currently looking for some technical problems that anyone of you has faced while using wimax services. I’m currently using Wateen’s broadband and telephony and I do not have any issues with the availability or any other thing. I strongly agree with the awful service experience in the past but I seem to have a lot better service after upgrading my CPE firmware. Why? Because I researched and solved this issue.
I have been browsing internet and collecting information about wimax culture, its future and troubleshooting its complicated problems. Believe me, the results are astonishing as well as shocking. Even in developed countries like UK, US and Australia, wimax is suffering from a hard time, regarding its service problems. They are certainly better than us in technology and many other things, except a few morals, but they too are having problems in establishing this service.
If you browse through their blogs, you will always find a technical problem faced, the reasons, troubleshooting tips, their own opinions and several worthy things, which are helpful for a service provider. Why don’t you guys go for some positive criticism, your opinions and suggestion? If Wimax culture is really having problems in Pakistan, we should play our cards right. It might help ISPs to locate the problems and ensure provision in specific localities, where there really are problems and people who do not understand terms such as Firmware, upgradation and even the ISPs. What do you say guys?
Lets start a discussion, which details the advantages that we can have using wimax, (except the simple home internet). Detailing all the positive aspects and its problems, we can get a very prominent benefit of online media. We can certainly succeed in spreading the proper information that needs to be known. We are the consumers and we know better how these services can bring ease in our lives. So, What do you say?
August 11th, 2008 at 10:18 am
well…. much nice technology has been introducd in pakistan. i think so if MOTOROLA ll deploy that technology then we can say that it is a big competitor of WATEEN
August 24th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Hey, anyone heared about Worldcall EvDO. I was involved in their Friendly User Trial. Its quite good!
August 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Just wait till launch of witribe…. u will see the huge service difference between mobilink, wateen and witribe
thanx