Batelco just released their new pricing. Some will say that these are good. But they are only good when compared to Bahraini rates, which are a rip off anyway. In real life, it is bad. Very very bad.
The rates, if you are still in the dark:
| Speed | Price | Max Usage |
|---|---|---|
| 10MB | BD80 | 50GB |
| 8MB | BD60 | 40GB |
| 4MB | BD50 | 25GB |
| 2MB | BD30 | 20GB |
| 1MB | BD25 | 15GB |
| 640kb | BD16 | 5GB |
| 256kb | BD10 | 2GB |
How about that?
In a discussion on Facebook in the Bahraini Internet Society's group, I posted this (with correction):
Some of you may know that I host a gaming show at Ithnain.com. So from a videogamer viewpoint: These speeds are useless.
Speeds and ping rates prevent us from playing online properly with other players. Simply the devices and software are not designed for our slow "speednets".
We are falling behind on productivity. As an example: There is a device called OnLive,
which will be an always connected gaming console. Its minimum (I repeat: Minimum) speed requirement is (real) 1.5MB. I said real, not "up to". That is the minimum.Average performance is suggested at 5mb. (Wikipedia)
By looking at this device alone we can see that we are no longer going along the rest of earth. Even Facebook, Vimeo & You Tube find it hard when I upload videos and I must use the "basic" uploader for our "slow" speeds. I have 1 Mb at home and 2 mb at work.
Netflix are renting movies online by straeming them in Hi Definition. This would be impossible in Bahrain. When will it be possible? Probably when a strong family business man or a royal makes a similar site and orders Batelco to increase speeds to accomodate this.
These new Batelco speeds and prices are appalling. The prices would be right if you multiply the speeds by 10. ie: 100mb for BD 80, and so on. Don't get me started on the threshold. I do know that a few (very very few) companies abroad have thresholds but they are much, MUCH higher than these weak limits. Threshold should be to prevent you from making your PC a server or a torrent seed point, not to stop you from using the damn connection!
If this situation is not fixed and soon, we could find ourselves in the next two years with unusable websites and services.
You've been warned.
5 comments:
Totally agreed, as you said, we are happy with the new rates and speeds but it could have been better.
We will never get faster internet speeds. maybe in 20 years when everyone have speeds that go up to 100GBPS, MAYBE THEN we'll get a cheap 100Mb (Megabit not Megabyte so it isn't MBPS lol!) connection.
totally agree that the internet rates are ridiculous. But the fact is, ever since bit-torrent started making up most of the traffic on the internet, telcos all over the world have clamped down.
ALL companies that I know of in the UK have either thresholds or packet filtering (or both!) . What's more, companies such as Virgin will disconnect you (after a warning first) if you download copyrighted material.
As for gaming, I would have thought its only the ping rate that matters as the amount of data that is uploaded or downloaded is usually minimill, its the speed at which that data moves back and forth not the download rate (ie ping rate rather than kbps). But then I haven't used the device you mentioned.
But yeah, Its better but not exactly good.
Thanks Faris. I'll grab your last statement:
Better but not exactly good.
Is this satisfactory?
If our football team played better but lost each and every game (Not good), will we be happy?
If you take your car to a mechanic complaining of a noise, and receive it later not fixed but with LESS noise, would that be OK with you?
If you want to go to the UK, and all the airplane could take you to was as far as Paris (closer, but not there), is that OK?
I know many people in Bahrain, the TRA and Batelco will claim that it is better.
I claim that it is bull shit.
Love the plane analogy, not sure its entirely accurate though. :)
Doubling your speed and reducing the bill by 10 beeds is a huge improvement. But when you compare to Europe and and the UK its clear that the prices are still extortionate.
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