Wateen Wireless Vs PTCL Broad Band

Note: All the below given information is only my personal opinion based on my personal experience with both Wateen and PTCL broad Band connections. Other people may have different opinion/experience with these services.

Few years back, I decided to work at home and earn money at freelance sites via doing online jobs. At that time, I only had a 4KB or less per second connection.

This was the time when I had some worse internet experience. I tried many internet providers but they all had the same slow speeds. In countries like USA, people were moving on to 4+ MB per second connections and I could only get a 4KB/sec connection.

Anyway, I had no choice and things on the internet worked slowly. Then there was a time when I had to do freelancing plus I had to manage my websites too. The slow internet connection made things worse for me and was pushing me back.

I had to work for 18 or so hours every day: most of the time during my work, it was the waiting for the internet connection to open the required page.

In the month of [I think] January 2008, Wateen started its services. I was glad to see a fast internet provider in the town. I was one of the few customers who booked their orders on the very first day of Wateen’s internet service launch : )

People said that, Wateen is expensive and we need to pay a security fee plus some other fee too [installation charges], but I did not care about any of those things as I was desperate to get a better internet connection.

After using Wateen for about 1.5 years, I finally decided to get a PTCL broad band internet connection.

The reason why I decided to get PTCL was that: I have seen my brother use PTCL broad band: he got PTCL broad band in the month of January, 2009, and I had not seen him complaining about his internet connection.

Here are advantages and disadvantages I experienced while using both these internet services.

Wateen:

Advantages:

Wateen uses a wireless device for all internet activity at the users end. This means that no phone line is needed to get connected to internet.

As the device is portable, it can therefore be used with laptops quite easily.

Wateen limits the amount of data that users can download. The current package that allows the most download is 15GB limit [Update: Wateen now supports a Conditionally Unlimited Download limit].

This sounds like a strategy to deliver quality service to the customers as if unlimited download is allowed, then there is a possibility of overall internet speed to decrease for all users.

For users who are upgrading from a dial up internet connection [delivering speeds like: 4KB/Sec], Wateen Wireless connection will have quite few attractions like: no dial up modem anymore, no line rent for a dedicated phone line that one may need for a internet connection, no charges for the dial up calls that are needed to be connected to the internet, receive fast speed instead of snail like speed and etc.

There are times when the internet via Wateen will be working just as described. Opening websites will take just a click and a second wait.

Disadvantage:

NOTE: Please read the Comment Number Four after you finish reading the main article. In comment number 4, I have mentioned another problem I had with Wateen’s Wireless Internet Connection. I came to remember this problem after I saw the comment by Taha Usmani.

You may experience signal problems. Signals for Wateen device are very important and having less signals means, slower internet speed.

When I first got the Wateen device, only one signal out of five were used to show up in my device. Sometimes, all signals were gone and I was left with no internet service.

At first, I thought may be something was wrong at Wateen’s signal tower but this problem started to occur very often.

After I contacted Wateen franchise, I found that Wateen service was working just fine near the signal tower and my problem was related to the low signals in my area.

It took months for Wateen support to realize the fact that the low signals in my area was causing problems. Where I already had pointed out this possibility many times to Wateen support but they always said that low signals have nothing to do with slow internet service.

Anyway, as there were many Wateen customers in my area with low signals, I guess this made Wateen to install a signal tower in my area.

After that, signals got full and things seemed to work out quite well. But unfortunately, the good times did not lasted for long and different problems started to show up again.

The new signal tower started to have problems due to which we customers, were left with no internet service, even for 3 straight days. All we could do was to sit in front of the Wateen device and look at its signal searching mode and hope that the searching mode will end.

Every month, I have experienced down times with my internet service provider [Wateen] and because of which, I was unable to update my websites and was unable to work at freelance sites.

This down time was for 1, 2 and even for 3 straight days.

Many people in my city have complained about signal problems in their home or office. The signal issue and down time are the biggest disadvantage of having Wateen’s wireless internet connection.

One big disadvantage of Wateen is the download limitation. There is no freedom to how much internet you can use and 10 GB or 15 GB seems to be very tight limits.

I easily reach and many times, crossed this limit.

The money that Wateen charges for extra usage is very high. The additional data downloaded is charged as: Rs.50 per 100MB extra usage.

Wateen site where we can check our account details: I have experienced problems in using this site.

Wateen’s site where we can check our usage: most of the time, I had problem with these stats. I got over 10GB limit, many times because I could not see how much internet I have used.

The biggest reason why I quit using Wateen:

I had a very serious issue with Wateen. I have experienced slow browsing most of the time. Websites used to stuck while they were opening. On contacting Wateen’s support, they told me to delete all cookies and other stuff like that.

I have done what they have told me multiple times but the problem remained unsolved. In the end, the support person suggested that there must be something wrong with my PC or with the sites I am opening.

This was not the case as on the same PC and for the same websites, Wateen use to work perfectly fine for few days: there were like few sessions of successful browsing with Wateen for few days and then I experienced the browsing problem again.

Also, while I had the browsing problem, Wateen device used to go in searching mode many times. Signal used to drop and come back many times. Signal strength used to decrease too.

There could be a possibility that I had some problem with Wateen wireless device but that was also not the case as on experiencing the browsing [also the signal problem], I at once visited Wateen franchise and checked the device there.

Wateen franchise is in an area that has another signal tower. There, my device worked like a charm with no signal or browsing problems.

But nobody listen to requests seriously and I was left with this annoying browsing problem for not months but years.

PTCL Broad Band:

Disadvantages:

A possible disadvantage of PTCL broad band can be phone line requirement and the extra charges. But this is not always the case as the new PTCL broad band device can be used without engaging the phone line.

That is: when PTCL broad band internet is being used, the phone set can also be used at the same time.

There are two PTCL broad band internet connections in my home. One is used by my brother and I use the other one. The one that my brother use is attach to the primary phone line and I have a separate dedicated phone line for my PTCL connection.

Phone set is only used in primary phone line.

When PTCL Broad Band device is active, we experience some problems with the phone set. We cannot clearly hear things on the phone. There is some loud noise in the phone set and it is caused by PTCL broadband device.

We have to unplug the phone line from PTCL device in order to make phone calls. PTCL support person told few tips to tackle the situation. The tip was related to making changes in the phone line connections to PTCL device and the phone set.

I have not yet made the changes. May be this problem can be solved completely or at least it can be solved to some extent.

Update: I hooked by a telephone set on the Phone Connection that I am using for PTCL Broad Band Internet. The phone is working just fine. I hear no noise of any kind. Both the telephone and the internet connection are working at the same time and I see no problem what so ever.

To solve the problem of noise in the Main/Primary Phone Line: PTCL support personal told me to first connect the phone line to your primary Telephone Set. At the moment, the phone line is first connected to the PTCL Internet Device and is then connected to the primary Telephone Set. I will make the required changes and I am sure that this noise problem will completely be solved.

Sometimes, I see slow internet speed in PTCL broadband. This happens very rarely and I am not sure if this is some problem with my system or this has something to do with PTCL.

Update: I saw some slow internet speed [4-5 times for few minutes] with PTCL Broad Band in the start: but now for the past many days, the internet is working just fine. There was just one time when PTCL Internet was not working at all. It was because of some problem at their server and it was corrected after few hours.

I have just started to use PTCL broadband for like 3 or so days and I have not seen any major issue with the internet usage.

Advantages:

In PTCL broadband, unlimited download is allowed.

It is cheaper than Wateen. Wateen’s 512 KB/sec package cost something like Rs.1350/month where PTCL’s 1 MB/sec package costs Rs.1199/month [Note: Wateen charges some installation fee plus some security fee for their device [approximately RS. 6000]: on the other hand, PTCL installation and the device, both are FREE].

If we install a new line for PTCL broadband, it is still much cheaper than Wateen. The line rent and package cost is less than what Wateen’s minimum package costs.

Conclusion:

If you are comparing Wateen and PTCL internet services than for me, PTCL wins by big lead. I am quite disappointed to not get PTCL broadband internet connection when this service started in my city few months back.

Note: To see Updated Per Month Internet Charges, for Wateen Wireless Broadband Internet connection, Please read the 26th comment.

Note: for PTCL DSL Broadband Internet Connection charges, Please read the 32nd comment.

Update: Wateen has made some major changes in their packages. The 15GB package has been converted into an unlimited download package. Prices of some packages are also changed. You can see the updated prices on the page which is mentioned in the 26th comment.

There is one important thing to tell about Wateen’s New Unlimited Download Package: I came to know about these new changes via an email that I got from Wateen. In that email, it was mentioned that Wateen will only allow a fair usage of their unlimited download package.

Meaning that: there is still a limit to how much a person can download via this unlimited package. Wateen mentioned that: fair usage policy applies to this package.

What kind of usage is fair? And what kind of usage can be called unfair or an abuse of this policy? I have no idea about it. I have seen people using PTCL Broadband day and night: downloading lot of stuff all the time.

I have not seen any kind of unfair use problem with PTCL internet connection. Wateen’s 1MB/sec package is still expensive than PTCL 1MB/sec package. And the unlimited download is only virtually unlimited. Only fair usage of downloading is allowed with this package. I will still say that PTCL broadband packages are much better than the new Wateen Wireless Broadband packages.

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