Facebook Boycott on 20th May 2010

Facebook is Going to Get Banned in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube in a bid to contain blasphemous material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) in gross violation of fundamental human rights pertaining to one’s religion.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” blockade of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he said while talking to a UK-based news agency.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a year for what it called un-Islamic videos.

A PTA official, who declined to be identified, said the action was taken after the authority determined that some sacrilegious caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were transferred from Facebook to YouTube.

Representation of any prophet is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous in Islam, let alone the caricature or cartoon of these divine personages.

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to 25 percent of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It’ll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 percent of the country’s total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark’s embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

Original post: http://www.techfilled.com/ptcl-customer-information-system-security-flaw.html

Local Link for Customer Information: http://pakbee.com/ptcl.htm

PTCL has silently made a change in their broadband policy.

According to old policy, customers had to pay rent of PTCL broadband modem every month with DSL charges and when customer wanted to discontinue PTCL DSL service he had to return PTCL modem to PTCL – if he is not 12 months old customer.

Meaning that after 12 installments, modem belonged to customer – and PTCL couldn’t demand for modem if DSL services were discontinued after 12 months.

But now with new PTCL broadband policy, all new and old customers must have to return back DSL modems at the time when they want to discontinue their DSL service, even if they have completed 12 months or more.

So now modem charges are considered as monthly rental for modem and not the monthly installment.

This policy is valid for old customers too – meaning that if a customer has paid modem installments, even then he will have to return the modem in case of disconnection.

On other side, on new connections – you will have to get PTCL’s modem even if you have your own modem/router with you, unlike LinkDotNet, which allows you to use your own modem/router.

For example with Linkdotnet 1MB student package comes at Rs.885, which includes Rs.150 for modem rental. If you have your own ADSL modem, then you can get the same connection at Rs.735.

via=’http://propakistani.pk’

It seems like PTCL is going to double the DSL speeds of broadband customers very soon, most likely with in month or two, at most – same like it did last year. According to news the existing packages will be doubled as

• 1 mbps to 2 mbps
• 2 mbps to 4 mbps
• 4 mbps to 8 mbps

According to PTCL representative and feedback of different users PTCL is testing these double speeds on randomly selected subscribers from different areas of country. These users will be downgraded after the testing period ends to their original speeds and will be upgraded after official announcement, which is most likely to be on 23rd March, but can be delayed as no final date has been announced yet.

The up gradation process may take several months according to the size of network. Though PTCL is using is ADSL2+ which supports up to 24mbps but at same time there are many subscribers on Copper media, which supports up to 4 mbps at most (that too with distortion).

We hope that student package users will also get this upgrade and can enjoy higher speeds at discounted rates as recently PTCL discontinued all student packages above 1mbps.

We will keep you informed on this, you can also share your experience in comments if you got this test up gradation.

No official words on the situation yet.

via ProPakistani

PTCL is going to get aggressive with hosting business as well. This is evident from its recently announced data center facility in Karachi.

PTCL has been offering web hosting and domain registration service since long, however, it didn’t show the seriousness the way it is demonstrating now.

For hosting packages from PTCL click here

Tough time ahead for local web hosting companies, given that PTCL can manage billing so easily through its already running landline billing system. It merits mentioning here that Pakistani consumer is usually troubled due to in-availability of credit cards – a must have to buy hosting and domains from hosting companies.

Below is the PR for PTCL data center facility.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) has launched the largest data center in Pakistan, the first of which will be located in Karachi.

This data center is engineered using the same rigid specifications, consistent with international standards and data center certification bodies and is enabled with technologies that proactively manages an enterprise’ mission-critical applications for predictable and continuous performance.

The PTCL Data Center is protected from intrusion and failure with multi-layered security, fail-safe redundancy, diversity measures, and rapid response recovery measures.

Talking about the data center, Senior Executive Vice President South Karachi, PTCL Abdullah Yousaf, said that PTCL’s investment in these type of services underscores its commitment to the rapidly expanding ICT sector in Pakistan and highlights the rapidly growing demand in this market who turn to PTCL for integrated hosting and network solutions, allowing them to focus on their core business. PTCL is making these investments on behalf of the business community of Pakistan, so that our customers can focus their resources on their core businesses, entrusting PTCL to provide what we do best – ICT.

The new center is directly connected to PTCL’s global MPLS backbone to offer a rich portfolio of hosting solutions with unparalleled network performance and features. PTCL offers capabilities designed to deliver greater efficiencies for hosting customers through the use of technologies such as storage on demand, processing on demand, business continuity and disaster recovery, all of which are integrated with PTCL network services.

Senior Executive Vice President, Commercial, Naveed Saeed while highlighting the importance of data centre stated that the aim is to provide business enterprises in Pakistan a reliable, responsive and resilient infrastructure to suit the their needs. The data center is designed and built to accommodate an enterprise’ IT equipment and software in a secure, managed and climatically controlled environment. The bottom-line is to benefit our customers in terms of cost-effectiveness, efficiency of processes and scalability of needs.

PTCL is the only unified service provider in Pakistan and is able to service all enterprise segments with a comprehensive portfolio of products including fiber optic and wireless connectivity, MPLS, VPN, Managed and Hosted technology solutions. And now with PTCL’s data centre, a tailor made accommodation for an enterprise’ application processing environment together with appropriate connectivity to the fully redundant self healing optical fiber network backbone, a much higher level of security and technology support to an enterprises’ mission critical operations is being offered