Zong Offers Truly Unlimited Mobile Internet: ProPakistani

Zong Offers Truly Unlimited Mobile Internet
Thanks for Reminding us of Draw Mohammad Day by Blocking Twitter
Rs. 17 Billion Allocated for Broadband Development in Pakistan

Zong Offers Truly Unlimited Mobile Internet

Posted: 21 May 2012 12:15 AM PDT

Zong Internet1 Zong Offers Truly Unlimited Mobile Internet Zong, after rocking the market with all sorts of mobile internet packages, has once again set a new standard by introducing truly unlimited mobile internet – that is: without any data limits on downloads/uploads at all.

This truly unlimited mobile internet comes at a daily subscription charge of Rs. 10 (including taxes) per day.

This new package will replace old daily mobile internet package of Zong with no download limits – which was earlier capped at 50 MB per day.

Also, with this new daily internet package, Zong customers of monthly mobile internet package will revert to daily mobile internet package – with which they can enjoy the daily charging instead of paying Rs. 200 in advance for whole month.

Though, paying Rs. 10 per day will translate into Rs. 300 per month – but you will get truly unlimited mobile internet, plus daily subscription model, instead of monthly subscription – which would be useful for majority of Zong subscribers.

That’s not all. You can enjoy unlimited download on every fourth consecutive successful subscription of daily package, without any extra charge. Check Update at the end for more.

Daily Unlimited Mobile Internet:

Unlimited Mobile Internet
Daily Charges: Rs. 10 (auto re-subscription)
Activation Charges: Rs. 10 (One time activation)
Subscription: dial *909#
Un-subscribe by sending an SMS: unsub<space>unlimited” to 909
Un-subscription charges: Rs. 5

Note

This package is available to all Prepaid Zong customers on all commercial packages.
The package is truly Unlimited with no usage caps.
Limited Time offer.

Update:

That’s not it, if you use Daily Unlimited Mobile Internet for three consecutive days, you will get fourth day for free as Bonus.

Activation of the loyalty program is automatic; meaning that you just have to use the package for three days consecutively – to automatically get fourth day for free.

This bonus comes with no extra subscription charges. Just the daily subscription charges for the day.

This package is available to all Prepaid Zong customers on all commercial packages.
The customer will be eligible for unlimited browsing after successful charging of fourth day.
Unlimited browsing starts after 5:00am on the fourth day and ends at 11:59pm

Thanks Qamar for the update.

Thanks for Reminding us of Draw Mohammad Day by Blocking Twitter

Posted: 20 May 2012 11:08 PM PDT

It was a wonderful Sunday yesterday with beautiful weather in Islamabad. I was enjoying my relax hours during weekend – longtime readers know that we usually don't work on weekends – when a friend called me to tell that Twitter is blocked in Pakistan due to Draw Mohammad Day.

Honestly, I didn't know of Draw Mohammad Day until that moment and would have never known of it if access to Twitter wasn't blocked in Pakistan.

Just to ask you – did you know of it? Please vote below:

Government of Pakistan say that Twitter didn't respond positively to their request for removal of content which could be blasphemous in nature, and hence they had no option but to completely block the website in Pakistan.

Facebook, on other hands, complied with the government's demands and made sure that no blasphemous content would reach Pakistani audience.

It is evident that government's action of blocking twitter was to restrict the access of blasphemous content. But you will agree that it didn't work. Instead, the blockade acted like an advertisement for Draw Mohammad Day by recalling everyone – even those who had forgotten this evil day.

Moreover, if authorities concerned may know, Twitter doesn't host pictures itself, rather it uses other services for hosting images. Hence chances of circulation of blasphemous content were minimal, as we got no reports of circulation of blasphemous content even when Twitter was un-banned later in the night.

Having said this, I must note here that Twitter isn't angel in itself too. Twitter, earlier in January 2012, had announced that it could filter content (tweets) by country – to meet local laws and standards.

Twitter had Noted following in a blog post:

Starting today (January 26th, 2012), we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

Then why not to block tweets in Pakistan? Maybe they took Pakistani government lightly, or even worse, Pakistan government probably couldn't communicate the need properly. We don't know what was the case.

ProPakistani is awaiting a reply from Twitter to learn what exactly Government of Pakistan had asked for.

So what did we achieve by banning Twitter? Only one thing: Bad press.

Blocking internet (twitter, Facebook or any other website or service) is considered as vital as a plane crash. Whole world covers it; every website, newspaper, magazine, tabloid will curse you for blocking internet.

I will recommend authorities concerned to make sure that blocking something is worth it. For instance, Draw Mohammad Day on Facebook was harmful indeed. Ridiculous cartoons had started appearing in news feeds. They were popping up whenever someone commented on it (even when cursing the cartoonist), or when your friends were tagging you to report the image and so on.

But twitter has different mechanism. Like, you can't tag someone, images won't pop up if a friend of yours comment there or reports it, unless he retweets it. Twitter is all-together a different thing. And above all – Twitter isn't as big as Facebook, locally or globally.

So we will have to evaluate the decision and its impacts, the bad name it could earn for you. Is it all worth while or you are just shooting in the air to earn nothing.

Rs. 17 Billion Allocated for Broadband Development in Pakistan

Posted: 20 May 2012 09:51 PM PDT

Yousaf Raza Gilani, Prime Minister of Pakistan, has announced that government of Pakistan has plans to allocate PKR 17 billion (USD 190 million) in next year's budget for stretching the broadband services in un-served and under-served areas of the country.

It is anticipated that this money will be taken from USF's pocket, which was specifically created for the development of telecom, broadband and ICT in far flung areas of the country where doing business isn't viable otherwise.

Mr. Gillani revealed that his government had already spent Rs. 22 billion on IT, without mentioning that this amount was disbursed in five years, and that too by Universal Service Fund (not by his government) that is funded from 1.5 percent yearly revenues of all telecom companies.

It is said that PKR 62 billion is lying in USF's account (that is bound to increase in July 2012 – as the end of fiscal year nears) which the government has plans to disburse on development projects to get the credit in upcoming elections.

Regardless of the goals Mr. Gillani has in mind, if spent well, this PKR 17 billion grant can change the course of internet reach in Pakistan in one year. Internet Service Providers are eagerly waiting for new bids to work on with USF.

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Monday, May 21, 2012