Wateen's service quality

[Shaheer Khan]

I have a friend who lives in Chaklala 3 (for those in the Islamabad/
Pindi region), and he said that during the trial, the service is free
(which I read on other parts of the internet, in forums, primarily;
those users were in Lahore) He also said that the download speed he
gets averages at around 600KB/s.

I don't know whether it's a good solution, since I'm bothered about
the latency on Wimax (if it's as good as DSL's, then I'm in) and the
ACTUAL transfer speed. Moreover, I'd like to know the backbone (or
route) Wateen uses - PIE, or SMW/TW1 pipes.

And I see their ad in the papers now and then, saying that the service
is available for corporate clients (and SMEs). At what prices? When
will the home user services launch?

Hope someone can hit back on this thread.

[Muhammed Nasrullah]

In this current FUT phase the bandwidth will ofcourse be nice. Once the system goes live to the public, the actual load will determine the QoS. I believe Wateen has pipes from both PIE and TW1. Expect their corporate commercial launch anytime soon!

[KO]

I had a trial Wimax connection from Wateen at my office which was active for 2 anda half months early this year, from March to mid June. My impressions:

1) Latency was excellent. Better than DSL (and I've used most of them). Ping times of 18-19ms to Wateen's server, and onwards to the world ranging from 100 to 250ms. Sometime 400-500ms also, but generally very fast.

2) Download speeds were 1mbs, sometime 0.5 to 1Mbps, but generally closer to 1. At times it would go till 1.4-1.5 mbps also.  Of course, at that time there weren't a lot of people on the network, so speeds were faster than they will be on launch.

I was surprised with the low latency, as I had thought being wireless it would be higher latency.

Impressions about the company:

My trial connection was supposed to seamlessly transit over to a paid connection. Sometime in June they told me they are launching any time now, and said they would have to take my connection offline for a short period, and get back to me "soon" with the rates and switch me over to a official paid connection etc. I ok'd it with them.

It's now the end of october, and I still haven't heard from them yet. No prices, no contract, and no service. A dozen odd emails passed back and forth, with a few promising that they would send prices and a contract over "tomorrow". Finally I got fed up of them and told them to take away their equipment as I didn't feel ok just holding on to their wimax antenna and box without any formal paperwork. Again they reassured me that it is ok, I can hold on to the equipment and they will restart it very soon.

I never did write about this experience before, because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, and so was waiting to see what they will do. Overall, my impression of the company couldn't be lower.

What really gets me is that after making the effort to install a trial connection, run it for almost 3 months, they just disappeared! They're not even bothered to take back their wimax connection point, and despite repeated efforts from my office to get in touch with them, there hasn't been any reply yet.


regards,
ko

On 10/22/07, Shaheer Khan <shaheer...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Majid Farid]

Mostly like that gear that you have at your office is from Motorola
Lab in US.

Motorola is treating this as a live test bed where real life situation
arise which can not be reproduced in lab like weather factor etc.

20 msec ping is a good lets see what happens when more customer get on
(if they do:) )

The delay might be due to the fact that they are struggling with their
billing system deployments

/Majid

[Shakeel Ahmad]

I have herd same response from a friend in DHA Lahore. I am expecting the CPE to be at my home this weekend and will post out the results.

[Shehzad Abbas]

Agree with Khalid, pre-sales is un professional and generally very sluggish. Their technology might be performing ok, but the people definately arent!

[KO]

Today I got a call from Wateen from some tech person who said they need to dismantle my existing trial wateen antenna and box.

I asked him about getting a Wimax connection, but he said that is marketing's job and he doesn't have anything to do with them. He said he can't give prices, but he did say their network is now up and running and they have a number of customers online now.

ko

[inspirex]

weird.

They have up and running customers, trial customers are being taken off trials, and their sales dept is sleeping!

ideally speaking, the sales/marketing div. should have contacted you and offered you a benefit to "confirm" your subscription by offering a special plan to its trial customers as a token of thanks....also by offereing a special package if you decide to stick now, as compared to calling them again later.

 

Looks like departments are not co-ordinating!

---

From: telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of KO
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 11:54 AM
To: telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Wateen's service quality

[Tee Emm]

The 'not-my-job' syndrome is gripping the entire data (where the cellos are increasingly finding themselves wandering in too) industry. It is almost on a pandemic level. It baffle and disappoints the customers to endless extents.

Those operators who could address this enemy-within (by enhancing in-house communication and fixing the attitude of the execution layer which is essentially driven from the one adopted by the top guns) are going to get it right.

However, there are exceptions. I have a good perception in this respect of a small(er!) datacom operator which is not a very old name but one of the things that is immediately visible when you talk to any of their reps in any domain is the sense of 'talking to the company' and that of a listening (and reacting) ear.

-T

--
Tariq Mustafa         MSN:t...@hotmail.com
Active Cell #        http://tinyurl.com/2ob35t
Industry Blog: http://pakng.wordpress.com

[KO]

Sales did contact me - 3 months ago - and said my connection would be up and running within a week. That was 3 months ago though...

This thread here seems to indicate that they have actually launched:
http://www.wiredpakistan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2799

[inspirex]

which, by the way, still means that departments are not co-ordinating!

its crazy how customer de-centric our services sector is.

 

customer service efficiency and quality is supposed to be a marketing initiative, because referrrals hold the highest value in continued subscription based service aquisitions, especially when it comes to retail markets. Coporates have their corporate account managers who push for their client's preferential treatment.

 

 

---

From: telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com [mailto:telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of KO

Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 12:38 PM

[Ashar]

On Friday 02 November 2007 12:07:33 Tee Emm wrote:
> However, there are exceptions. I have a good perception in this respect of
> a small(er!) datacom operator which is not a very old name but one of the
> things that is immediately visible when you talk to any of their reps in
> any domain is the sense of 'talking to the company' and that of a listening
> (and reacting) ear.
>
> -T

Can we name names on this list, please? Especially if its something good!

Ashar

[faisal yousufi]

I just need to correct my friends here that Wateen is only using PIE .They are doing negotiations with TWA( TWA1 Cabe) and Multinet Pakistan ( SMW4 cable ) for there bandwidth requirements from last six months but still not taken a final decision.

 

-Faisal Yousufi