Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Warid offers up Zoom

It was wondered upon, by yours truly, when would warid succumb to market pressures, and offer a lower SMS rate, and more importantly, *how* would it bring it up.

The wait is now over, warid has just offered Zoom!!!! A SMS+MMS bundle for both zem and zahi customers. Here's what it does.

For a rate of Rs. 2/day (Rs. 60 a month), you get a "quota" of 20 SMS or MMS (which ever you want to send) for the entire day. That counts to 10 paisa's per message. They lapse at the end of each day. Afterwards, SMS and MMS are then charged at Rs. 1 each.

In another offering, for a flat rate of Rs. 5 a day (Rs. 150 a month), you can now send *unlimited* thats right.. *unlimited* mms, sms per day!

More interestingly... your allowed to 'switch' packages on and off whenever you like, making it much more convenient! Also, the rates are valid for messages to *all* networks within Pakistan.

Im so... so much more happier now :)

*on a side note... they've taken a departure from their normal naming strategy... i wonder why?

Zahi :: Hidden *features*

There's always a catch in every package offered by every company. Warid, sadly, is no stranger now to offering such catch's!

I signed up for the Zem1000 account recently, which was bundled with 1000 free minutes, (600 Onnet, 200 Offnet mobile and 200 offnet ptcl). I noticed at the time, that there was no mention of free sms's or free mms's, but was assured by the CS staff that they were unchanged from previous offerings.

Damn CS staff!!!

Warid Zahi packages now no longer offer free sms's, rather they charge for each SMS made from day one! I for one, though, am not complaining! Why sms.. when you can call!!!

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Message not sent!

Score another one for warid (dont know about other operators cept Mobilink)! There are times when this message coming up on your mobile phone is actually a good thing!

When you try sending an sms to an invalid number, warid actually stops you from sending it!!! Unlike mobilink on which if you enter an invalid number, they still send it and charge you!!

Yup! im such a warid fan :D

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Reduced international call rates

When the telecom industry was being deregulated, i kept hearing stories of how it benefited other countries which had deregulated their telecom sectors. One such story which clung to my mind was that of Germany where international call rates became cheaper than local call rates. Ofcourse, that was for landline based operators and does not really tie in here.

VOIP has been slowly making its way into the cellular sector, marking a drastic reduction of call costs for the consumer. The first to enter this market was, ofcourse, Paktel (now that i write these things here, Paktel does seem to be the first mover in a lot of things). International dialing rates were slashed down dramatically w.r.t other providers who were still using the traditional systems.

Recently, Mobilink launched lower-rate internatioanl dialling for its postpaid (Indigo) customers and later, rolled out the same service for Prepaid (Jazz) customers. Dividing the world into five zones, they've structured the call rates from Rs. 2.35 to Rs. 20. I've yet to see what connectivity they're offering but it promises to be good.

Warid telecom (ofcourse, i just HAD to put something about them here too) also offered up a similar service by the name of Warid 111, though as yet, its only offered on Prepaid packages. International dialing on postpaid still goes through the old system. Warid's 111 rates are even lower than Jazz still starting from Rs. 0.99 (for Zem 60) for zone 1 countries to Rs. 15.99 for zone 4.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Indigo -> Now more purple

Is it any wonder why mobilink continues to remain the market leader? With poor quality service, continuous problems, compromisations in the billing system, and what not, they still manage to pull the biggest weight around.

The answer to this mystery is surprisingly simple. Its their marketing machine which is responsible. They always have something new to offer, something to pull people in, some new to entice. Be it Octane, Ladies First, or the Jazz Icon search, there's something which keeps people going back to mobilink.

The latest in their strategy is pulling in (and keeping) postpaid customers. This i suspect came from the recent announcement of Warid's new postpaid packages. Their new offering is no where near warid's offer, but a lot better than its previous ones.

Here's the lowdown. They now charge a flat airtime rate for all calls everywhere. Then, they add Rs. 1.25 to all calls made to other mobile networks, and Rs. 0.52 to fixed line networks.What they've introduced now is weekend rates, which means that on Sunday's, call cost less.

Free minutes have increased (they claim that) but free minutes are valid only on airtime charges. So if you call other networks, you still get charged the interconnect rates (mentioned above). SMS is also more expensive than other operators at Rs. 1.

Now, remember i said Mobilink's the market leader because of their marketing? Now let me elaborate on that. They're the leader because they're marketing strategy involves hoodwinking the poor customer as much as they can!! They do offer calling rate as low as Rs. 0.40, but what they don't mention is that its only on sundays, only valid for other mobilink numbers and on their highest package. For other operators, add on the interconnect! SMS rates are more expensive than the rest, and even general airtime is more expensive that what any other operators give.

I've done a small comparison between the different packages offered here. Check out the complete worksheet here.