Wateen’s Triple Play and Wimax launched in DHA Lahore on limited testing basis
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Wateen is apparently launching a limited public “beta test” of their triple-play and WiMax services.
From what I gather from their website and TV tickers, here are the details.
- Voice and Video Calls
- 2 Mbps uncapped internet
- Digital TV with Pay-per-view movies
- Price Point — last I heard it was around Rs.500/mo.
The CPE details are vague, but Wateen is using Fibre-to-the-curb in DHA and a Motorola Canopy WiMax equipment, so I’d say it is going to be cheaper than the Rs.30k Fibre Router provided by Nayatel.
Interesting, but no time for analysis yet — one of my draft stories was going to talk about this before it launched, but well it has.
If anyone gets the chance to test out this service, give me a comment — I believe Qazi (one of the readers) lives there?
10:57 am
Wateen’s service area coverage is far too slow even in DHA, I live in D block and cant see any progress at all apart from some boxes and plastic pipes which were laid there few (quite a few) months back.
One interesting thing happened yesterday. I received a phone call from wateen rep telling me that since i registered at their website a while back so i qualify for Rs 3000 discount on WiMax package. I told that lady that I live in DHA and am interested in triple play service. She told me that this triple play service will be closed down in future and only WiMax service will be available from Wateen. Well it sure was a shocker for me and I asked her again about this and asked how come wateen spent so much money laying cables and stuff if this service is not going to be continued in future!!! Well she didnt gave me a clear cut reply but again reiterated that only WiMax will be available.
My personal take is that since she was only sale rep who didn’t knew much about operations. Any one else had this experience??
10:52 am
Still not sure about the tariffs but do want to note that the Wateen reps came and had me sign a new signup form.
My service is finally working. Miraculously it started working Feb 1, the day they start charging for it. What I am upset about is the problem was easily fixable but they refused to do it before this time and kept lying to me again and again all these months.
On a side note, hear Orascom (Mobilink parent) are now offering DSL service as well (called LinkDotNet. They are advertising the following packages:
256 Kbps UnLimited Rs.1200
512 Kbps UnLimited Rs.2000
1 Mbps UnLimited Rs.3900
(Modem and Installation are included)
Don’t know how good their service is but it is good to know there is yet another option just in case. Anyone here happen to try it?
10:59 am
P.S. Looking at LinkDotNet, I see:
“In June 2007, LINKdotNET successfully acquired and merged WOL TELECOM and DANCOM ONLINE to become the largest Internet & Data Solution provider in Pakistan.”
This leads me to ask we getting an improved product or just a re-branded package????
4:37 pm
http://freewebs.com/infoplace
is site pay muft Urdu+islamic books dawnload karin.
12:48 pm
Major problems with Wateen – why you shouldnt just go get connected straight away!!
Places other than Defence Lahore you need Wateens Wimax to get connected , For which you need to pay a hefty amount for the modem and post dated checks – which sums up to a considerable amound and the post dated cheques make sure that you’re stuck with wateen no matter what happens with them in times to come – in a country like ours everything can go wrong the new government can ban wateen !!!
Using wateen through cable – which makes the most sense (tripple play package for defence) as you can use the same cable for tv and telephone is what one seems to find economical / most worth it , but this too comes with its own package of downsides / problems / no to appealing feature . The most horrible one being the downloading limits on all of their packages for internet – the most you can download with a domestic connection is 10gb which makes having the broadband connection totally worthless!! you might as well browse pages with dialup than pay for wateen and get stuck on 10 gb.. and the sum you have to pay goes up quite a lot when it comes to getting that 10 gb with a decent downloading speed (3,000 .. a rough estimate for defence …cable service not wimax .. wimax is just trouble like I said earlier)
to cut the long story short .. wateen would not be as much fun when it will come to paying for it with the downloading limits high price tag on wimax modems , and with alternatives in town now LINKDOTNEt which are advertising no limit packages (no caps) wateen has begun to sound very unempresssive!! If you are thinking you can make up for these short comings of wateen with their telephony services which is relatively cheap .. well thts not even that straight forward using a new number is just a hassel and on cable modem(defence wateen) there is a slight hum and there is no CLI on wateen and with ptcl slashing down their rates tremendously by the day, not to mention coming up with a decent DSL package as well – wateen tends to sound even more unimpressive!!!
Long story shor – internet revolution is still to come in pakistan .. wateen just hasnt done it as yet!!
10:57 am
Well the tariffs are finally announced for the service in DHA Lahore:
Triple Play Packages:
Crystal package = Rs. 850
– Cable TV
– Internet (256 Kbps, 2 GB)
– Telephony EverGreen Line Rent
Diamond package = Rs. 1,350
– Cable TV
– Internet (512 Kbps, 4 GB)
– Telephony EverGreen Line Rent
Upgrade Internet download volume @ Rs. 200 per GB (Max 10GB)
(Modem: Purchase Rs 4,999 or Rent Rs.149/month)
Make your own Bundle
Telephony:
Classic Green: 0 Line rent 0.60 per 30 sec call
Go Green: Rs.90 Line rent 0.50 per 30 sec call
EverGreen Green: Rs.150 Line rent 0.40 per 30 sec call
Go Green: Rs.270 Line rent Wateen to Wateen free, others 0.40 per 30 sec call
Cable:
90 Channels for Rs. 350 per month
Internet:
Vol 128Kbps 256Kbps 512Kbps
1GB 250 350 450
2GB 450 550 650
3GB 650 750 850
4GB 850 950 1,050
5GB 1,050 1,150 1,250
6GB 1,250 1,350 1,450
7GB 1,450 1,550 1,650
8GB 1,650 1,750 1,850
9GB 1,850 1,950 2,050
10GB 2,050 2,150 2,350
Installation: Rs.999 for new customers
Security Deposit: Rs.500
So basically if you don’t want the telephony service I have to pay more (Make your own bundle) What a selling point
Crystal package is certainly reasonable but the 2GB limit a bit low and I feel the 200 per GB rate is a bit high. I am not sure how it is going to be implemented. Seems when I hit the monthly limit i won’t be able to use my connection. I hope i am wrong and they let me continue using the connection and bill be for the next GB. I certainly don’t want to sign up for extra GB’s just in case I go over the limit. I also hope the user page shows the download numbers for the month so I can pace myself and am not left with a connection i cannot use say for a week or two just cause I hit the 2GB limit….
6:33 pm
In one word the new Wateen packages are crap! They are an insult to broadband interent. I would never spend my hard earned money on a crappy wateen connection with so many caps and what not! If you find comfort in using this crapy service in any way do let me know you’ll be doing me a great favour, as I surely cant see these money hogs do such injustice to my earnings!
5:39 pm
Just thought I’d give an account of our experience with LinkDOTNet.
This is for Karachi, and the 256k DSL package (apparently).
We registered online, giving our name, number, and address, and within a few days, got a call from somebody. A few days later somebody came over and collected the Rs. 1,200. Because of the weekend and some holidays, we didn’t actually get installation until about a week later.
The guy who came to install it was…not smart. He was coached through the procedure through the phone and even then he had no idea what he was doing. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to finish ourselves what he’d started and he quickly left. One thing to note, though, is that he gave us a 26mbps router…
Another bonus is that for the first week, the speeds we were getting were sometimes in excess of 200kBYTES/s and on average way higher than 100kB. 256kbps shouldn’t go much higher than 40kB, right? However, the service went down for a while yesterday, and when we called, we got a response relatively quickly that the service was being fixed. It started working again in several hours, but much slower, at the rate it was supposed to. I guess they’d probably given us too much the first week and only later rectified the situation.
Still, it seems to be relatively reliable, and very close to 256kbps speeds, and the unlimited part is heavenly. I hope as more users get added it won’t slow down.
9:47 pm
WATEEN REALLY SUCKS, ITS A DISGRACE TO BROADBAND!!
9:51 pm
there should have been preemtive strikes against them way before their launch their internets sucks to tht extend
9:59 pm
Someone sure had a bad day!
One Question though WateenUser – why do you continue using them then?
10:03 pm
maybe because i paid for it , and you cant really use it , its like an abuse to boadband, using it just to browse pages, so not worth the seemingly lower wateen prices, its a major rip off/disrespect to ones hard earned money!
10:24 pm
im using wateen , to make surre no one else makes this mistake and has to go through such an agony..such disabled interent, such a disgrace to broadband , such a mockery made out of us ,unquestioning customers.
12:25 pm
I live in Islamabad, and as of late my parents have really been sold on the call rates Wateen is offering through these packages.
So we figured we should give it a try. Its been two days so far since we handed over the checks and advance deposit. (Rs. 3000 for the CPE and 12 checks for 1350)–Evergreen unlimited.
Of course it seems right off the bat that the sales people are not in sync with what marketing is trying to push out the door so quickly.
I’ve signed up for the VOIP and i figure i’ll make up my mind in the first month or so on whether i want to continue with it.
Otherwise its Micronet + a Vonage box on some port that hasn’t been closed
4:44 pm
Wateen really suck, their Voip is just a major cover up they use for their awfully useless internet… so dont come under the impression tht ur getting to make cheap phone calls, u can use ptcl instead and u’ll still be paying way lesser to call any where…..
5:50 pm
Hallelujah! We seem to have a solution written by a community member here:
http://greenwhite.org/2008/03/29/how-to-fix-your-wateen-connection-and-get-very-high-speeds/
6:44 pm
you cant even view youtube on wateen any more!!
wateen can blow me now
wateen .. getting useless by the day!!
9:52 am
Okay so the update on my side is that the field team came in to deploy the device. They were quite all right.
The only this is that i could only use the device when my login id had been provided to me (that took another 4 days).
And i’m expecting to receive my phone activation details today. Like i said i already have a micronet dsl connection at home. We signed up for this package because the telephony package they are offering suited our needs.
However the internet hasn’t been functioning that great so far. Yesterday i couldn’t access youtube, reader.google.com and wired.com. Even npr.org wasn’t coming up!!
So i called up the customer support and the rep was pretty sure that youtube had been blocked all across pakistan (ha!). I think there was a youtube outage but it happened like a month ago!! I double checked with my micronet connection later to confirm that there is no youtube blockage in pakistan!!
So i’ve lodged a complaint and hopefully a get a field crew at my place today to look at this issue. Somethings defenitely a miss!
Will post details as things progress. I figure i’ll give wateen a month to smooth out these glitches.
If i experience inconsistent service i probably will discontinue my service and just continue with micronet.
But fingers crossed
PS: another friend of mine who lives in the same area as me isn’t experiencing the youtube problem so maybe its just something unique to my wimax device.
1:34 pm
Okay, it took another 2 days to get things up and running. Unfortunately the sales person who sold the whole package to me couldn’t get much done saying it wasn’t in his hands.
So in the end i had to go through my father’s contact and ended up with an audience with the local branch manager. I had to take my device in since they said they would ‘re-install’ software on it. I wondered why they had bothered to install it in the first place if the right software wasn’t there to begin with.
The phone is working fine, we have made calls to singapore, canada and USA (UK too). The voice quality is fine from what i’ve heard my family tell me.
The internet experience has been flaky at times. Reader.google.com wasn’t coming up until late last night.
Youtube is still blocked
. What joy does a 512k connection give me if i can’t enjoy videos!! I even mentioned this to the branch manager and he was as bewildered as the customer care rep i spoke with last week.
Its like Wateen lives in a different Pakistan or something. Or some dumb IT guy forgot to disable the block 2-3 weeks ago.
Because i had to take action myself and take the device to the local office for fixing, i give the wateen customer experience a C grade.
The complaint number i have is useless since i haven’t heard from any team of technicians who would like to address it. Although my net browsing is fine on day one, the youtube thing is such a drag.
Another thing i’m going to look into is that how come i have to keep logging in with my wateen account to keep the wimax device online. Its like whichever computer i use at home i’ve had to login to my wateen account to enable net browsing after an hour or so. I have had to do this thrice last night. I think i could find a work around if i look hard enough.
So far so good, the parents are happy and the browsing with the above exceptions is fine too. But it took some trouble getting to this point.
7:32 pm
i am a student from gift university we r doing a business plan over WATEEN’s project which it has initiated in DHA lahore So i find according to people’s suggestions that WAtEEN is facing problem in connection in DHA lahore so they have to be quick in resolving issues people in to make better image in next target markets which they r focusing on.
5:49 pm
wateen ki security ziada hai aur net ki downloading unlimited nahi hai.agar yeh unlimited ho gayay to is say best company hi na hoo. ADEEL RIAZ. KALUPURA ROAD .GUJRAT
2:19 pm
When you buy the connection, sale guys will tell you that we give the speed of 512Kbps. Thats a big lie, because my speed rarely ever exceeds 20KBps. And when i called helpline, i was told by Customer service officer that 512KBps is shared with 4 people in your locality. This was something new, which was never told to me before. So in a way i am paying around 2,000Rs/month for 128Kbps with limited download. And once you exceed that download limit, they charge you heavily for any exta MBs of download.
8:55 am
20KBps on a 512Kbps connection? Consider yourself lucky! I am getting 8KBps(=64Kbps)on a 1 Mbps(=128KBps) WiMax connection — and funny thing is even on that low speed somehow I manage to hit the 4 GB download limit WITHOUT downloading anything. Funny, isn’t it?
Note: At my 256Kbps connection at home (cable connection in DHA) luckily I am getting the speed as advertised. But their WiMax sure as hell SUCKS!!! I thought WiMax would be more reliable but besides the sorry speed (the modem though is showing a great connection with all signal strength LEDs lit up), it also keeps dropping the connection many times a day.
2:21 am
wateen rocks better than all
11:47 am
wateen is the worst:(((((((
koi mujh say poche??
12:49 pm
it is worst for those people who are not in its coverage and have bought it!!
im a user of Wateen Wimax and Telephony, i think its the best ever in PAKISTAN!!! i used Ptcl dsl also.. but not impressive!! what more can u expect than 140kbps speed on 1 mb connection?? theres no competitor of wateen rite now.. DSL is DSL… WIMAX is Wireless… i can see the future of Wateen is GREEN!
10:40 am
I have recently obtained the wateen connection and so far as concern its benifits,it is very good service but downloading and browsing are limited with 4 gb package like me Rs.599/- per month and it is very costly as the provided limited accedes much in few days in eye twinkle due to dowon loading and waching of any clips on you tube or free movies.The conectin holders financed dreadly,it is un juctice.Down loading should be un limited, so the subscriber may benifit more and more.
2:02 pm
With so many hidden charges inflating my bills every month, I couldn’t differentiate one internet service provider from another until I joined Wateen WiMAX. Get this…5 GB of space with 256 kpbs connectivity at only Rs.500 per month and a telephony tariff of only Rs.90 per month…It gets only better with the special EID offer with unlimited net surfing and downloading, international and local calling all for free from Dec. 8th to midnight Dec. 10th….Wateen will truly keep me connected with family and friends this Eid!!
1:00 pm
I had a wateen cable internet as well. Looks pretty attractive but when you get it, then real picture shows. Due to capped downloading, you are charged more than monthly bill. It is understood that whatever you access on the net, it is saved in temporary memory and then displayed. So every kb is included in your downloading limit and you suffer.
New way of looting.
7:38 pm
Guys why don’t you try outdoor unit, (you will have to insist on that) get it installed and I guarantee you will notice better service (if not the best), I did that a few months ego and pretty satisfied now. Most of the problems are due to poor coverage I believe. However, Wateen Prepaid platform is mess as ever.
7:19 am
Well Effan ,
Kindly confirm what issues you are facing from Prepaid Platform?
Regards
WateenCS
9:17 am
Can anyone tell me plz what is downloading speed of wateen 5GB tarrif with 512kbps speed?
i m using 10GB Tarrif with 1MB speed which gives me 35 to 50kbps downloading speed. now i want to convert my package to the wateen unlimited downloading with 512kbps speed.
Plz just tell me what downloading speed u get on ur 512kbps speed?
Plz send me sms on my mobile number 03458340239.
thanks bye
11:42 am
I am extremely disappointed with wateen services at Phase V, DHA Lahore. No TV cable connection is provided & wimax is alos not avialble
DHA must take action as wateen as monolopy in Phsae V
Asif
0334 6500249
11:43 am
I am extremely disappointed with wateen services at Phase V, DHA Lahore. No TV cable connection is provided & wimax is alos not avialble
DHA must take action as wateen has monolopy in Phsae V
Asif
0334 6500249
4:58 am
Please let me know abt wateen coverage & downloading speed in Gulistan-e-Jauhar Block-13,Karachi..
11:59 am
I m intrested in purchasing Wateen UPS. is there anybody who is the user of wateen’s ups and let me know its working?
10:01 pm
Off the top of my head, I read first few comments then it started straining my eyes, anyway, I wish to have little more “Useful” login screen, if they insist on login after 12hrs or so, wouldn’t you agree, maybe something like;
http://eyes2fingers.com/Desk/
what do you guyz think!?
10:34 pm
I am a Sales Executive from WATEEN.
If anyone wants a WATEEN connection please do call me on this number..
0303 4285967
free delivery any where in lahore
Thanx.
1:53 am
WATEEN Wimax Offering
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Offerig 60% Off Buy Any Connection
5GB downloading+ 1MBPS speed
256Kbps Rs. 600 usb rate & wi-fi= 700
512 Kbps Rs. 700 usb rate & wi-fi =800
1 Mbps Rs. 800 usb rate & wi-fi = 900 inc tx.
10gb & un-limited also avail
Other Information
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onliny lahore
03034285967
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