by : admin Communication, Pakistan, Telecommunication

Get a 50 Mbps Broadband Connection on PTCL today

PTCL - 50 Mbps VDSL2 Bonding connection

No, PTCL doesn’t pay me for this but its out of sheer excitement, I just came across the least advertised but certainly available broadband connection by PTCL. We did hear about it earlier in April but now the connections are silently available. No ads, no hype and no big buzz. May be this launch is like that by design (not a home/consumer product yet?)

What do you need?

Ok, so here’s the deal. If you want a whopping 50 Mbps connection at home or at office, all you need is a pair of copper PTCL connections ( yes you need two lines), a modem/transceiver that does the magic and those PTCL guys helping you connect through the big bandwidth.

How does it work?

They call it VDSL2 Bonding technology. It’s a few steps ahead of the normal ADSL we’ve been using with additional bonding and aggregation of two copper line bandwidth to attain more than double the bandwidth. You can read more about the technology here.

How much does it cost?

There are three packages available with speeds 10 Mbps, 20Mbps and 50 Mbps and cost Rs. 9,999 , Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 20,000 respectively per month. There’s an additional (one time) installation cost of Rs. 10,000 when you get a new connection. Yes, that’s costly for a home user but may be very much affordable for small/medium businesses and corporates.

What next?

I’m looking around for anyone who has signed up for the service and will get back to you guys with a review, so stay tuned. If you or anyone you know is using this service, please do let me know.

How to get it?

Call 1236 and figure it out 🙂

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by : admin Communication, Google, Google Apps, Internet, Technology, Training

How Google Apps can help in classrooms

When I was in school, the Internet did not exist at all. I’m really happy for some of the kids if not all of them, to have access to the tools that prepare them for the future. While I go down the memory lane to thank all my teachers, I want you to please watch this video shared by Google discussing how Google apps can help school children to learn better and how they can be beneficial for the teachers in the classrooms.

Once you have seen above video, I want all you thinkers to suggest, how can we use technology in our schools in Pakistan, where access to technology is scarce and drive to bring the change is very low. I don’t say that the traditional teaching methods are incorrect, but we need to bring the change, jump ans skip the techniques being used in recent past by the modern school systems and to adopt the latest teaching and learning methodologies in our classrooms.  What do you think?

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by : admin Communication, Google, Google Wave, Internet

Google Wave is dead – Long live the web

Google Wave

I’ve been using Google Wave for quite some time now but I admit, I couldn’t find many active users and the use was very limited. A communication and collaborative discussion tool without many users is useless. Google Wave has not seen a wide spread user adoption and due to the same reason, Google has decided to stop further development on Google Wave. The Wave site will be up till the end of the year but at the end of the day, the project is dead.

Web has seen so many interesting and exciting solutions that could not find a commercial success. Google Wave will always be remembered for being super-innovative and I’m sure we’ll see the same concept growing up in one or more of Google’s other products to make them even better.

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by : admin Communication, Internet, Mobile Apps, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunication, Video Communication Apps, Voice Communication Apps

Skype vs Fring – Skype says Fring was being illegal

As we’ve covered already, Skype calls and instant messaging is not available for Fring users anymore. Fring calls it a cowardly act by Skype. Skype on the other hand says that they have not blocked out Fring without any reason. According to Skype, Fring was using Skype API in a way it is not supposed to be use, hence violating the API use agreement. This is what official Skype blog says about it:

Fring was using Skype software in a way it wasn’t designed to be used – and in a way which is in breach of Skype’s API Terms of Use and End User License Agreement. We’ve been talking with Fring for some time to try to resolve this amicably.

However, over time, Fring’s mis-use of our software was increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers. On Friday, for example, Fring withdrew support for video calls over Skype on iOS 4 without warning, again damaging our brand and disappointing our customers, who have high expectations of the Skype experience.

Whatever is cooking between Fring and Skype, its turning out to be a nightmare for a lot of Fring users. Some believe its a move  by Skype because they are now coming up with their own Skype client on many mobile platforms, so they are trying to keep Fring’s competition at bay. Whatever is the case, all those users are suffering real bad who have been using them on mobile phones which do not support the native Skype clients and they are left without the capability of making or receiving skype calls on their phones.

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by : admin Communication, Internet, Social Networking

Google Wave – Now you have a reason to use it

Google WaveIt has been a year Google has launched Google Wave. Since it’s a communication tool, it doesn’t make much sense without many people using it. While the product has been its preview mode from Google Labs, you don’t expect many people being online when you log on to your wave account. That is why I have hardly logged on to my preview wave account in last six months. But now I have a reason to log on to this useful tool.

Google Wave has not only grown one year old, Google has also opened its sign-ups for the public. If you have a Google account, you can jump and sign up for this service right away.

Now as Google Wave is public, you will find more people using it, more of your friends will be online and you’ll be able to make more use of this service.

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