Home | Database Home | About | Activities | News | Supporters
From: a <rehana@paknet1.ptc.pk> To: RANDY@PSG.COM Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 12:44:08 +0500 (GMT+0500) A Brief Review of Internet Access In Pakistan --------------------------------------------- Following options are available to anyone willing to access internet from within Pakistan: - Get an online Internet account from any of the following organizations: - Fascom The best ISP in Pakistan offer 64k baud rate email: info@www.fascom.com -Aster Net Email : info@aster.com.pk - Digicom They are the first commercial ISP in Pakistan. Due to bandwidth limitation, digicom reached its saturation with some 2000 users. New accounts are not being provided and those having digicom account are really considered to be lucky. The annual fee is Rs. 600 (and I am sure, digicom do regret setting such a low fee). Connect time is charged at Rs. 100/hour in the day and Rs. 50 / hour in the night. PPP connection with *no* proxy server. Every internet tool can be run from a digicom account. People use Internet in a box, Netscape, Eudora, Pmail, Microsoft exchage etc. Low rates start from 10:00 pm and getting a free telephone line can eat up your hour easily. No future expansion plans known. Addresses take the form: user@biruni.erum.com.pk - CompuNet Online CompuNet online is a new service. Owned by the famous Aero Asia Tabani Group. There is no joining fee but there is a monthly minimum usage of Rs. 500. Connect time is charged at Rs. 50/hour throughout the day. (Surprisingly), email above 10K is charged nominally. Users have grown to around 1000+ despite the fact that not a single penny has been spent by CompuNet Online on marketting. This has nothing to do with their service-quality. It's merely a work of ISP-vaccum that is present here. Although the interface is graphical, the users are not very much satisfied with their service which is yet to become as stable as digicom's. CompuNet uses a proxy server and hence only web and mail works with their account. Addresses take the form: user@khi.compol.com CompuNet recently expanded their services to Islamabad. They claim that they are going to upgrade their satellite link from the present 64K to 256K in near future. Accounts are still being given. Addresses: user@isb.compol.com - PTC PTC recently launched its internet services. It is the slowest (in terms of getting a connection), the fastest (in terms of data transfer) service around. They are not offering a PPP connection. Users have to dial into a unix account from their PCs. The interface, naturally, is text base (and hence, sucks). Web is browsed through Lynx. FTP, Gopher, and Archie are available. Mail is through PINE. Connect time is Rs. 24 per hour which drops to a mere Rs. 18 / hour at night. Addresses take the form: user@paknet1.ptc.pk PTC has recently announced that they would be giving their users a graphical interface through TIA (The internet adapter). - Shua This new service is owned partially by Jaffer Brothers. They are not aiming this service for common users rather they are aiming 'power users' who need speed. No tarriff is currently available. - IBM/SuperNet (to be announced in future) They have announced their arrival but no future schedule is available at the moment. - Misc. LUMS (Lahore University of Managment Sciences) went online some couple of months ago. It is the first Pak. Institute to have an online internet connection. Reserved for students only. Addresses are of the form: user@lums.edu.pk BrainNet, Lahore is also offering online connection (on reportedly enormous rates). Addresses are of the form: user@node.brain.com.pk - Get an offline (UUCP) connection from any of these organziation - SDNP 1, Bath Island, Clifton, Karachi. SDNP don't charge any 'monthly subscription fee'. SDNP don't have any 'minimum monthly usage'. They charge Rs. 500 initially. International emails are charged by data size. Rs. 3 per kb. Mail sent to Isb, Lhr, Pwr, etc. is charged at Rs. 2 per kb. Local mail (within Karachi) is free. The software provided by SDNP is Waffle 1.65. WinNet, an MS-Window based UUCP program can also be used with SDNP account. They call their Isb office 6 times a day which calls their NY node 6 times a day. Approx. user count: 900+ Addresses are of the form : user@node.khi.sdnpk.undp.org. One can make as many users on his nodes as his os permits. - Digicom Pardasi House, Back of National Bank Head Office. Karachi. There is a subscription fee of Rs. 50/month. Mail is charged as Rs. 1 / kb. Bills are generated on per mail basis so that the effective email rate is somewhat more than Rs. 1 / kb. The mails are immediately transfered to the destination because the server is online. WinNet (Win/Win95) and Waffle (Dos) can be used. Approx user count: 1600+ Addresses are of the form: user@node.khi.erum.com.pk - ImranNet: Address: N.A. Fighting for survival. Users have switched to either digicom or SDNP. There is a minimum monthly usage of Rs. 500. Mails are charged at Rs. 3 / kb. Approx. user count: 200+ Addresses are of the form: user@node.khi.imran.pk - BrainNet: Main Shaheed-e-Millat Road, Near Pizza Hut Recently intensified their marketting in Karachi. Many users are turning to BrainNet. Mail is charged at Rs. 4/ kb. - Infolink: Address: N.A. Infolink basically concentrates on corporate clients. There are, however, individual email users susbcribed to Infolink. Addresses take the form of: user@infolink.net.pk - Misc: Various BBS (Paknet, Buraq, etc.) offer email but at very high rates (something around Rs. 10/kb). NED has a very sparingly used UUCP connection with UUNET. BrainNet, ImranNet, Infolink, SDNP(isb, khi, lhr, pwr) and 3 major BBSs of Karachi are colloborating in a Nationwide Usenet-like newsfeed. This newsfeed now has an audience of around 1500+1500+800+100 ~ 4000 users, making it effectively the biggest single group of email users in Pakistan. Prepared by: Tariq Mustafa, tm@xiber.com
