Category: Mauritius

Orange Mauritius being generous: ADSL prices fall, MyT speed doubles! (updated)

by
Inf

I did say I was going to blog about Orange some time again. There was a news item that told how Orange suggested that prices remain constant and that speed increases, and ICTA wanted that prices fall while speed remains constant, which is plain stupid. However, something nicer appeared on the front of Le Mauricien today (Edit: Today = 26th Feb 2009, I am blogging this article after midnight).

If the news is correct and if what it says really happens, we are going to have a 35-45% price fall in ADSL prices. Do you believe that? A friggin 45% decrease in ADSL prices! MyT is going to follow soon according to that same article! New prices applicable as from 1st March 2009!

Seriously, this is wicked cool. Is it really? Wait a bit, you will see.

There is something I didn’t catch. There is X allowance (X is an integer) and Fair Usage Policy (FUP). I think allowance is a quota where you pay more after exceeding it, while fair usage, you don’t pay but speed falls. That’s me, so don’t consider these words to be a fact.

First lemme give you the prices and other stuff. Everything below refers to ASDL, so no MyT’s for now. 128K refers to 128K ADSL. All prices exclude VAT. Got it?

128K home (1 GB allowance) goes to 256K with 3 GB allowance. Price goes to 434 from 650. 33% fall.

Nothing yet for 128K home (with FUP). It was not mentioned in the article, saying the info was not obtained from MT.

512K home (with FUP) falls to Rs. 750 from the current Rs. 1360.,

The very best news now: There is a new package! 1 Mbps (with FUP) priced at Rs. 1360! That’s the price of the old 512K connection! Theoretically, you can now get twice the speed for the same price!

Then for ASDL Pro, for those who interested. Vat Included I think.

256K goes to Rs. 800 from Rs. 950 (3GB cap).

512K goes to Rs. 1300 from Rs. 1540.

For Rodrigues, same thing for ADSL home. For ADSL home 256 goes to Rs. 1600 from Rs. 1860.

Personally, I think this is good news. If not for the ridiculously low capping. (3GB on 256? Seriously? That’s less than a Linux distro DVD!) I also appreciate the introduction of the fair-priced 1 Mbps and I might even consider moving to that one when the new price policies start. That’s how 1 Mbps should have been priced from the very start! Now I can call it accessible. And I can finally thank Orange for listening to me: More speed for the same price. They did just that. I don’t know why ICTA was initially rejecting that, but they were not being rational.

Also, as you noticed, the FUP does not tell what exactly is the limit. I’d greatly appreciate some more information on that. Not this time I guess.

I am done now. Let’s hear your views. Happy? Not happy? What about the capping? Fair? Fair Usage Policy? Love it? Hate it? Suggestions?

EDIT:

Today (Today = 27th Feb 2009), news about MyT offers came out, and it’s very good news for them: Their speed doubles for the same price! 256K users will now have 512K. 512K will have 1Mbps and 1 Mbps will have 2 Mbps! Amazing!

Some new offers were also added, such as a MyT 512K with added TV channels (15 of them) for Rs. 999 / month. There will also be a 2Mbps offer will be available at Rs. 2999/month!

However, as Morinn has pointed out, there must be a catch!

I believe personally have two theories. Either Orange had the possibility to offer those speed and prices from the very start, but for some weird reason, they did not.

Or the more sombre reason: Capping and FUP will now be strictly enforced. As you probably noticed, for some users, even if they exceeded the unknown FUP limits, their speeds were not affected. I don’t know the limits, but I guess they must be around or less than 10GB. The question is: how can Orange offer twice the speed to all users, without making any upgrades to their networks or buying more bandwidth on the SAFE. Maybe I have missed something that was announced, or that it was done internally, but without upgrades, there is no logical way this can be done! Unless capping is strictly enforced.

This will keep heavy downloaders from leeching all the bandwidth, and redistribute the saved bandwidth to other users.

This is just a supposition, but a terrifying one none the least. We don’t know the limits, and therefore, don’t know when or how we are going to be capped.

Also, a commenter mentioned that 3GB capping. There seems to be a difference between capping, properly said, and Fair Usage Policy. As I said above, the “capping” policy is that if you go over the limits, you pay for additional MB’s downloaded. Whereas for FUP, it’s just that your speed decreases. Probably some kind of limit imposed, or that your connection is given less priority.

Another scarier issue: if capping (as in speed reduction) is enforced, it means that connections of users will be monitored to know what they are doing, how much and what they are downloading and from where. All this is just suppositions, but isn’t this called invasion of privacy?

Btw, remember how I was ranting about how my speed on Rapidshare was breaking and resuming every 4-5 seconds? It’s back! My download manager reports a download speed, but my router lights don’t flash. Ewww!

Note: My connection was automatically upgraded to 1Mbps today. I am having around 90-95KBps even 100+ KBps download speeds! AMAZING!! I noticed my upload went to 256 from 128! (Here I come, online gaming!!)

Ok, I stop here now to let you folks talk. I’m out of ideas. Let’s hear yours! 😛

Some Updates (and one rant)

by
Inf

Hello readers! No, I am not dead nor kidnapped by aliens nor anything else. I am just extremely busy with my life. Hell, CSE eats time. It just ATE my holidays! Who in their sane minds give 3 major assignments in a 2-months holidays?? Blame my lecturers!

I am just here to say sorry that I am unable to blog often now, but hey, it’s life. From now on, I’ll TRY (I say TRY) to blog about short tidbits here and there, instead of long articles. That’s until I end my Year 2, and all the assignments and whatever else associated with it.

For me to get some more sympathy, consider this: I got a test week (6 modules’ tests in one week!) in 3 weeks time. I got to submit 3 assignments (that’s till now, possibly more to come) by the end of the semester. And to conclude it all, I got exams (6 modules again!) that will cover the whole 2nd academic year’s content!! What the HELL! (Same for Guru btw) :/

Therefore, I ask for comprehension from your part. Don’t expect updates too often.

And now, time for the rant. You can guess towards what. ORANGE! :/

Damn them! I just noticed something funny today. I got a router, and I can see lights flash on it when I download. Well, guess what. Every 5 secs, the lights stop flashing, as if the download momentarily pauses. Then it resumes. I just timed it using a stopwatch. Every 5 seconds, there is a break!

Do you think this is normal? I bet this is some new form of capping or download regulation for “heavy” downloaders. I still haven’t exceeded 10GB download this month, so I really want to know what they consider to be “heavy downloading” for a 512K user.

Also, I got something to blog about Orange/Mauritius Telecom. They don’t do everything badly, as one would expect. This article will come soon, probably tomorrow hopefully, so wait for it. It’ll be a short one, I guess.

Pious Maha Shivratree to all. And bye, dear readers. 🙂

Farcry 2 features a Mauritian Mercenary!

by
Inf

Farcry 2 Mauritian Character\'s Bio

Picture courtesy of VideoGaming247

Farcry 2 has positioned itself as a very probable candidate for the “Game of the Year” with highly advanced AI and graphics. It was to be expected from the guys that made Crysis and the Cry Engine. At The same time, games at 666 casino was considered one of the best to play online. If you have ever seen the screenshots of FC2, you know what I’m talking about. If not, then see this video as a teaser.

It’s already out, and you can go and buy/download your copy now itself. It appears to be a game that’s worth playing.

It has not yet reached me, and as soon as I finish it, you will have my review here on GS.

My friend just informed me of something really interesting. Farcry 2 is about you being a mercenary, and progressing through the game doing missions for various factions and everything.

The interesting thing? One of the playable characters is a Mauritian! Yes, you read it right. You can play as a Mauritian, called Quarbani Singh, coming from Port Louis! (Fictitious person I hope!). Apparently, he’s a retired SMF! Thumbs up for detail!

It’s amazing that some big developers like Ubisoft knows about our tiny Island, and even features a Mauritian character! Thank you Ubisoft! I guess it’s probably that one of the developers there visited Mauritius and wanted to let others know Mauritius is great, or something like that. Or there is a Mauritian developer there. Nevertheless, it’s much appreciated.

This will probably boost knowledge about Mauritius among the gaming community, which is not a bad thing. They will get to know how crappy our Internet speeds are, and gamers value speed! 😛

So, what do you think about it? Will Mauritius be better known?

Summer time in Mauritius: Pointless?

by
Inf

At least this is my opinion. You may no agree with me, but after reading this article, maybe I’ll be able to convince you. First, let me tell you that I’m against this measure, even if I’m for the saving of energy and protection of the environment. But summer time? I’m totally rejecting that idea.

What’s the summer time concept basically? In Mauritius, we’ll be moving our clocks forward by one hour, embracing longer days and more sunlight. This practice is not unlike the proactive measures taken by fire watch services in Hollywood, especially as the summer heat intensifies. With the extended daylight, these dedicated professionals have more time to conduct thorough patrols and ensure that properties are safeguarded against the increased fire dangers brought on by the dry, hot weather. Just as we adjust our clocks to make better use of natural light, thus reducing electricity usage, fire watch services adjust their strategies to protect our homes and businesses. They understand that the bright days of summer, while perfect for leisure, are also a period where vigilance must be heightened to prevent loss from potential fires. So while in Mauritius you wake up an hour earlier, and return from work with an extra hour of sunshine, in Hollywood, fire watch teams are already on the move, using every available hour to ensure safety.

(DST will apply from 26th October to 29th March at midnight for both).

But according to me, it’s not that simple. Let’s see the case against, since the Government and others are already hammering us all with the case for.

Continue Reading »

Student Union Elections 2008: My views

by
Inf

Uncle Sam

Hello readers. If you are a student of the University of Mauritius, then you probably know that the Student Union elections are currently taking place. This year, there are a number of parties and individuals, as you’d expect. Each of them is offering us students some hope to improve the campus life. In this post, I’m analyzing the promises of parties, whom many people are considering to be the biggest ones (or at least the two who are advertising the most I guess). These two are: Students Welfare, Students Rights and Students Power. Why they all include “students”? Lol?

Personally, I don’t know any of the ladies and gentlemen in those parties, except one guy in Student Welfare. So you can say I’m not biased towards anybody in these elections. Another issue about me: I generally don’t like politics and politicians. Too many lies. Too many false promises.

For the analysis of main points, I’m confining myself only to the Faculty of Engineering and general student areas. Other faculties are out of my league since I don’t know much about how they work, or the needs of the students in those. At the end, you get some ideas from me, which I think is important.

Let’s start. Student Welfare first, shall we?

Continue Reading »

Geeks and Manga: Scope vs Me

by
Inf

Long time since I’m writing something new. Seriously, Uni is eating my time faster than piranhas can eat my Maths teacher! Anyways, I wanted to comment on an article that Week-End Scope (WES) Magazine published in the 10-16 September issue, on page 98-99.

The article was titled “Quand la technologie et les mangas rendent geek”. Translation “When technology and mangas make you a geek”.

Nice, catchy title I should say. It talked about two of my top favorite interests. However, what I didn’t like was the interviewees. Quoting a paragraph, “En effet, dès le départ, les geeks ont été considérés comme ‘ringards’, ‘insociables’ et ’boutonneux'”. Quite derogatory I should say.

Then, there is the interview of a person named Soura, who apparently doesn’t know what it means to be geek, when he says “Ces personnes sont trop moches. Ils n’ont aucun but et ne se diversifient pas. Bref, moi je vis ma vie à fond tandis que les geeks sont scotchés à leurs machines et s’endorment même devant”.

Seriously? These people have been watching too many Steeve Urkel episodes, and have seriously mixed up the definitions of “geek” and “nerd”. What’s with the bad image geeks seem to have in Mauritius?

Steve Urkel

Quoting some definitions off Wikipedia for “Geek“:

  • A derogatory reference to a person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake, who is also deficient in most other human attributes so as to impair the person’s operation within society.
  • A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media. Geeks are adept with computers, and use the term hacker in a positive way, though not all are hackers themselves. Those who are fond of casino games will find levelupcasino.com great.
  • A person who relates academic subjects to the real world outside of academic studies; for example, using multivariate calculus to determine how they should correctly optimize the dimensions of a pan to bake a cake.
  • A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
  • A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest. This definition is very broad but because many of these interests have mainstream endorsement and acceptance, the inclusion of some genres as “geeky” is heavily debated. Persons have been labeled as or chosen to identify as physics geeks, mathematics geeks, engineering geeks, sci-fi geeks, computer geeks, various science geeks, movie and film geeks (cinephile), comic book geeks, theatre geeks, history geeks, music geeks, art geeks, philosophy geeks, literature geeks, historical reenactment geeks and roleplay geeks.

and for “Nerd“:

  • Nerd is a term often bearing a derogatory connotation or stereotype, that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests that are age inappropriate rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. Therefore, a nerd is often excluded from physical activity and considered a loner by peers, or will tend to associate with like-minded people.
  • […] The stereotypical nerd is intelligent but socially and physically awkward. In film and television depictions, nerds are disproportionately white males with glasses, braces, acne and pants highly lifted up.

For me, a geek is somebody who is highly interested in something, and tends to pursue his or her interests, not some kind of freak that nobody wants to associate with! They just tend to do what they like, more than everybody else. We all have a geek in ourselves, unless you have no passion at all!

I know that, because I’m a geek too. My passions being computers, technology, gaming and manga.

A geek will not stand out in a crowd. They are just normal people, who look like normal people. Ok, they might have a kind of weird jargon sometimes (using ‘lol’ in real-life?), and crack jokes that most people will surely not understand (unless the other person is a geek too, or shares the same passion). But that doesn’t mean that they are anti-social. Do you think the guy below looks abnormal? No? (YES! THE GLASSES!) He’s a famous geek though! He’s cool and richer than Midas. Now, at least! 😀

Bill Gates

(OMG! Steve Urkel glasses! And what’s with that serious expression? Scary… :s)

So please, stop thinking that geeks are people with a serious looks problem and lone wolves that stick in their dark corners, peering out at you behind big round glasses behind a high pile of books!

Side-note: The people interviewed seem to have got the definition of “manga” wrong! Manga are books you read, while Anime (short for Animation) are the movies or episodes that you watch. One of the interviewees says “… c’est grâce a l’émission… […] … Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Nicki [sic] Larson ou encore Cats Eyes”. These are all ANIMES (although manga versions exist)!

Go get your definitions straight, journalists and interviewees! The purpose of this post? Because I think that some of the people who got interviewed offended geeks like, and I was being vengeful. There, I said it!

Got comments? You know what to do! 😀

Orange’s Capping Policy hit L’Express Newspaper

by
Inf

… and people are not happy! If you want a snapshot of the page, here goes: (Sorry for the quality. I’ve got no scanner)

Orange Article in L\'Express Newspaper

(L’Express of Wednesday 10th September 2008, Page 7)

This article talks about a number of interesting points worth mentioning. It seems that a number of users are not aware that capping policies were put in place, and continued downloading as they used to without caring for a limit. And now, Orange is surprising them by saying “Hey! You downloaded too much dude! You will be capped!”.

Personally, I don’t know anybody who got a warning for over-downloading (yet). We know there are capping policies, but I didn’t hear of anybody getting a letter or call, or anything like that to inform them of going over the cap limits.

Next, it seems ACIM (Association des Consommateurs de Maurice – I think) is not very pleased with Orange’s practices, reporting that even if Orange applied their capping in other countries, it should not do so here since there is hardly any competition in the ISP (Internet Service Provider) sector. Abroad, if you are not satisfied with your ISP, you can choose from a dozen others, while here, you are stuck with two or three, like Nomad, DCL and Emtel if you can afford the modem. Azu of MTML is not on par yet, with lowly cap limits of 1GB I think.

ACIM giving the matter focus is a good thing for us all, even if you are not a heavy user. What is heavy usage anyways? Orange says [2000 MP3s or 14 Movies] for ADSL 128K Home and [3000 MP3s or 28 movies] for ADSL 512K Home per month.

Seriously, is this how you measure bandwidth usage? In terms of MP3s or movies? It’s like measuring the speed of an airplane by how many clouds go by in 1 hour! Please, just tell us what is the real cap! Just tell us plainly “You are allowed x GB of bandwidth per month”!

Things like MP3s and Movies have varying sizes. I can say an MP3 has an average size of 5MB and I’m being conservative. A movie, assuming a DVDRIP is 700MB. Notice that no format is given. What is the movie encoded in? AVI? MKV? The size would greatly vary, almost in a 1:2 ratio! Ok, so I assume 700MB, then I estimate the cap to be around 9800MB or 10GB for 128K and 20GB for 512K? We are not told!

And what’s with the idea of telling people they can “download movies” and “download MP3s”? Is that  some kind of condoning of piracy? What I read here is this: “Pirate a bit, but not too much, else your speed goes down”!

Another issue: we are not told by how much our speed decreases. What if my speed goes down from say, 512K to 128K if I go over the cap? That’s 4x less than what I’d be paying for! Plain unfair!

And finally, in countries where caps are implemented, there is the concept of peak time and off-peak time. Caps are only implemented during peak time, and you can leech to your heart’s content off-peak. That is, if ever you find your speed reduced because you went over-cap, then the reduction only applies during peak hour, and the limits are lifted off-peak. This is a good idea, if ever caps are to be implemented. And duh, anyways, the caps abroad are > 200GB! Consider Comcast’s 250GB limit, compared to our paltry 20GB. And we don’t even come close to Comcast’s speed packages, so it’s definitely not worth comparing us with them.

On this, I leave you to your conclusions and comments… 🙂