I heard of Qubee
a little before they setup a widely* available service or a proper
consumer website through a friend who had been hired by them, and
another one whose sister was in charge of finding people for testing out
the services they were just installing at the time.
That is when I first came across the motto, a grand statement on a temporary website of Augere Holdings, the investors behind QUBEE:
' ... a mission to provide "broadband for all" and seeks to bring broadband Internet services to underserved communities worldwide' (Though that website doesn't exist anymore, it is available on the Wikipedia page for Qubee and Augere).
I have been a customer since 2009, and today, I happened to see that they were in the news - "Augere's Ahuja, 7 others sued"! Seems like their local shareholder (30%) Teleport Bangladesh
is the accuser. I am sure that'll get sorted out, but what I would like
to get sorted out for the benefit of my knowledge is their mission
statement above.
Who
do they mean, when they say "underserved communities"? According to
Wikipedia, this is their reach in terms of where they are doing
business:
Augere has so far launched broadband internet services in Pakistan in July 2009 and in Bangladesh in October 2009 under the brand name Qubee. Augere is also expecting to launch services in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and India in 2011 and is continuing to pursue spectrum across Africa, Asia and South East Asia.
So, am I the "underserved"? I think I could be if we put a spin on that phrase (which I see is usually used in relation to healthcare services).
The spin is quite simple. Recently I had a run in with their support
team (badly for the 1st time in 3 years to their credit) with what I
perceived as something wrong with their tracking of my usage. It came to
my notice since last February was the first time was the first time I
was found in violation of their FUP or Fair Usage Policy ~ use till a
30GB limit, at which point they shut down the internet unless I pay them
a month's worth of fees (do double payment for a single month). I tried
to get their support team to register my concerns with their technical
team, but was refused flatly on the logic that the traffic that was
generated was from my MAC ID - so it could've only been from my house. I
would even accept that point if I were to assume that their modems
usually send over requests and receive responses even if my computer is
turned off!
Khaotic
however did manage to get a technical person to go to his house and
witness such a phenomenon first-hand. With every kind of software turned
off - like Windows Updates, anti-virus updates, other software updates,
and keeping the processes and tasks in view, the tracker showed a
download of 40MB. The tech support person couldn't offer any
explanation for that, but someone from the support team followed up the
next day with some accusations first - "your windows was updating", and "your anti-virus was updating" and a few others, and then, secondly with a suggestion:"Re-install your operating system".
It feels like the support team right there is having some fun with
these complaints - rather than escalating the issue or getting to the
bottom of it.
Meanwhile, I have heard good things so far about the government run BCUBE**
and it seems like they have better prices for their services too. If
there were an 'underserved community', wouldn't they want to go with the
more economic offerings?
* Qubee is in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet now, whereas their WiMax competitor Banglalion has also gone there and beyond to Rajshahi, Khulna, Rangpur, Barishal.
** The website is not good looking in compliance with the rest of the government websites, I guess.
