Tag: ISP

19 inch from PrimeTel

No, no, you aren’t getting screwed.  Quite on the contrary!  I got an SMS from PrimeTel today with their special offer.  Here is the text of the message:

Free 19″ LCD TV.  Get 2 of your friends to become PrimeTel subscribers and the 19″ LCD TV is yours.  Call 133. Learn more www.primehome.com/offers

I know that you know that I’m biased towards PrimeTel, being an ex-employee and having a friends over there.  But I still have to say that this is a pretty neat offer.  I saw that 19″ LCD TV (remember that LCD means flat), and I wish I had any friends who aren’t PrimeTel subscribers… I have a much bigger CRT TV, and would swap it any day for a smaller LCD, that I could use as a monitor for my laptop too.

Too bad I’m out of non-PrimeTel friends right now, but you.. you got get the TV!

Google from the 700 MHz point of view

In the last two years, the well-known fact of Google offering free WiFi Internet access in Mountain View, California has almost been forgotten (except, of course, by people living in Mountain View and Googlers themselves).  At the time of news many were wondering about why Google is doing such a thing.  Not it all suddenly became obvious…

Slashdot reports that Google is preparing for a bid in the upcoming auction set up by FCC for a 700 Mhz radio frequency.  There are a few interesting twists about the offer – “open access” and “nation-wide”.  With these news, it’s hard to see the Mountain View setup as something else rather than a test platform.  With the recently released Android open mobile platform, the connections seem obvious.

The stakes for the band are high, and Google is planning to bid at least $4.6 billion USD dollars.  And they are paying this all out of their own pocket (not sharing with another company, etc).   Wh?  Because there are quiet a few things on Google’s agenda.

If you are like me, and need more information on this whole thing, here are a few pointers:

P.S. : Now those Indian telecoms have to re-think their position.

P.P.S. : In the completely unrelated news,  Ubiquiti Networks announced world’s first 700 MHz WiFi radio.  Here is the official press release.

Qatar – small country with a huge problem

Qatar is a country I know nothing about. And whenever I hear the name of a country that I know nothing about, the first thing I want to know is if they have Internet connectivity over there. It appears, that I should have be more careful with my Internet criteria evaluation – via via TechCrunch:

Qatar has a single ISP, Qtel, with a single IP address shared by the entire country.

So, the fact that there is Internet connectivity today does not necessarily imply that there will be Internet connectivity tomorrow…

Billing. It’s a serious matter.

Now this one is simply great.

I was reading through the funny IRC quotes at Bash.Org.Ru, which is a Russian analogue of Bash.org, when I came across the quote #4741.

Here is a rough translation for you:

Billing

Dear customers! For the last three days we had a technical problem and your used Internet traffic wasn’t calculated properly. We kindly ask you to calculate the approximate amount of traffic that you used during this period and pay cash accordingly in our office. With best regards, company management. http://isp.kz/

I smiled and almost went away. But before I did so, I noticed a small post-scriptum – it was a moderatorial note from bash.org.ru that confirmed that this message was actually posted to the official website of the provider.

So, I rushed to check it out and, indeed, it was still there.

I was laughing so hard that I almost woke up Olga and Maxim. I mean how stupid and naive that is – asking your customers to pay based on their own calculations? What are they counting at? Good will? Honesty? Or maybe they just have an excellent sense of humor. If so, they should have an update of some sort published shortly.

After all, those who thought tha Borat (.kz stands for Kazakhstan, as does Borat) was an exhageration are wrong. He is by far not. No.

Chop-chop

Due to some problems with my ISP the site will be somewhat slower at least for the next few days. Some traffic shaping rules were applied to my connection and now it will deliver only half the speed of what it used to. Hopefully, the problem will be resolved in a few days and everything will be back to normal.

In the meantime, I feel like I am back on dial-up, although I have a 512 Kbit/s link…