Digital Squid

The End! for now.....

2010-04-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

we should have done this long time back.... we didn't.... its about time we said goodbye! its around 3 years too late but its closure... :)..

goodbye folks and goodnight!

Wataniya's fibre optic cable

2007-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

when? where?

New Year Promotions.

2006-12-31T07:24:00.000-08:00

first of all HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone..

With the new year, The telecom companies are coming up with new year promotions and the first thing which have grabbed my attention currently is the reduction in price of all mobile to mobile calls for the first few days of 2007.

DHIRAAGU have announced that from 31st December to 3rd of January;

Postpaid customers can talk at 0.90 Rf per minute.
Prepaid customers can talk at 0.99 Rf per minute.

Note: * both fnf nominated numbers at 0.77rf for Postpaid and 0.84 for Pre paid.
* Applicable to same network calls

WATANIYA have announced that on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of January from Midnight till 1am, all call charges will be reduced by HALF.

Postpaid customers can talk to as low as 0.28 Rf per minute
Prepaid customers can talk to as low as 0.35 Rf per minute.

Note: * Applicable to same network calls.
* Price will vary between different talk plans

ROL Back Online

2006-12-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

This is just to inform that ROL is back online and working fine. However more questions still await to be answered... like.. is this permanent? is everything fixed? where does ROL go from here? do they change their service structure? what if somethign happens tommorow? do all customers still need to pay the full monthly bill this time around as well ?

anyway... i'm not being too harsh on them. we shoud actually give them credit as well. The service have been restored within almost 3 days time. so thank you for that *with a pat on the back* !

ROL - Focus Infocom Internet Services DOWN!!!

2006-12-26T22:27:00.000-08:00

It has come to out attention that ROL ( Raaje Online provided by Focus Infocom) services are currently down.

The services seem to have affected ROL's ability to provide internet services to the country. Currently it is being reported they are unable to provide internet access to any of their customers.
In addition to this wataniya , who has teamed up with ROL for their data services ( GPRS and WAP) are also unable to provide their customers with internet access.

Dhiraagu's connection is still up, possibly due to multiple connections they have in place to the internet backbone. That being said there are some issues connecting to Singapore and south/east Asian sites with Dhiraagu as well.

The cause of this outage is being attributed to the Taiwanese earthquakes that struck yesterday. Internet service in Asia slowed down after three earthquakes hit southern Taiwan yesterday according to (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYHaxhLE4rr0&refer=home) and could possibly take weeks to repair those links.

taken from http://www.internettrafficreport.com , the graphs below show that Asia region's connectivity has deteriorated to a very bad state.

ISP's, Banks, and other Institutions with rely on the internet for it's operations have been affected in the region

Although the cause of the problem was a natural disaster, it is evident which ISP is better prepared for a situation like this. Dhiraagu is also be affected but the impact is minimal compared to Focus Infocom's ROL services.

Is it a better indication of who is a better ISP? Remains to be seen.

DSCN project cost USD 20 or 27 million?

2006-12-23T20:08:00.000-08:00

Theres been a lot of talk going on about how much did Dhiraagu really invested for the Dhiraagu Submarine Cable Network (DSCN) project… in some websites it seems the project is USD 20 million,

http://www.slt.lk/data/investor/07announcements.asp
http://www.weerawila.com/Financial/464.html

While Dhiraagu claim it’s a USD 27 million dollar project.

http://www.dhiraagu.com.mv/newsdesk/index.php?newsid=561
http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/default.asp?ArticleID=19822
http://lw.pennnet.com/news/display_news_story.cfm?Section=WireNews&Category=&NewsID=142031

So people have asked me, “ how come SLT says 20 million and Dhiraagu say 27 million?” … to be honest, I am not too sure… but I just wanted to give my view on why the confusion has occurred..

Dhiraagu’s submarine cable landed in Hulhumale. However, additional domestic links were established between Hulhumale and Male', Male and Kaafu Villingili and finally the cable connecting the two atolls, Laam and Gaaf Dhaal. And in their press release, Dhiraagu have mentioned that the links established between Laamu Gan and Gaafu Dhaal Gadhoo is the final phase of DSCN project's marine work.

So maybe, the additional 7 million Dhiraagu mentions could most probably be for the first domestic inter-atoll submarine cable.

You can get more information on their press release and DMA news.

http://www.dhiraagu.com.mv/newsdesk/index.php?newsid=560
http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/default.asp?ArticleID=20038

Nail Down Your Connection Speed!! Dhiraagu Unlimited Package Review

2006-12-19T20:20:00.000-08:00

So it has been a while since Dhiraagu released its "Unlimited" adsl package. The first package from dhiraagu to be so. Many of us were very excited about the package being launched and rushed to sign up screaming "weeeeee... unlimited internet.... finally!! "......oh how wrong were we!!!

Dhiraagu's old 256kbps home user package the 'baraboa' one supposedly had a contention of 1:200 as so it was mentioned on dhiraagu's website as well as TAM. the new Unlimited package is supposed to have a contention of 1:75 according to TAM (http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=69) of coz the lower the contention the less sharing is done between users... well at least thats the way it usually is. wonder if i have this all wrong.

i do know dhiraagu has been very explicitly stating that the connection speed is not guaranteed.... no kidding!!!??? the connection i try to use seems to have a data cap set on it!!! or maybe its just my imagination.......

the above is just for HTTP downloads, starting at 1 something in the AM going on till well 7 AM. reason i used HTTP is, coz its most likely that all other protocols will be limited or http will be prioritized. i donno wat. but the fact of the matter is using a few download accelerators , coupled with normal http downloads pointed at different ends of the web, i've been tryin to sqeeze my connection to the limit. somehow it seems to be stuck at 30Mega Bytes per hour or less... it just dosent seemt to go any higher? is this just me or anyone else tried it?

hmm lets seee it usually averages around 28-30 per hour so.. lets jus say 29 MB as an average...(up and down)

29MB x 1024 = 29696KB x 8 = 237568 kbits / hour

237568kbits / 3600 seconds = 65.99kbps.... or 8.24 Kbytes /sec

(probably around 64kbps if you account for uploads)

did i get that right? any calculation errors? my bit to byte converter might be a bit rusted but if i got that right the average connection speed i get is around 64kbps

i donno.... is it just happening to me? does it seem fair to advertise a package as 256/64 when the average speed one receives is around 64kbps....

non guaranteed or not!! this isn't exactly any better than what focus used to offer.... and isn't useful for nythin other than surfing or chatting... if thats your cup of tea.. then ur better off with the 1GB baraboa package as its unlikely ur gonna exceed the usage with browsing or chatting, plus it's faster..

anythin more than that, like skyping, webcam, jus too slow to be even bloody useful......

well dhiraagu, jus have to say it's a disappointing package. but guys with enuf patience can put on their download accelerator shoes and maybe skim a few gigs of data off a month.... (don't even bother with torrents.... protocols other than HTTP seem to be on some limiter)

Dhiraagu's Fibre Optic Cable or Submarine Satellite?

2006-12-13T03:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was supposed to be a memorable day for all of us… do I need to say it again? … ok if u say so..

Yeah DHIRAAGU ( dhivehi – raajeyyge –gulhun) supposedly launched the first submarine cable in Maldives… happy aren’t we? But for what…. Yes, for cheaper and more superior quality service… and I’m not saying Dhiraagu’s submarine cable is not going to take any of those away from us… hopefully, a submarine cable is got to do what a submarine cable’s got to do right?

Ok back to my point… I just want to take notice on some minute details I came across in the whole launching of it..

Did it really happen? Did the first call made via the submarine cable get disconnected TWICE?
Ok… it did really happen… and think abt it.. if I did not know any better I would be saying.. “ is this the quality submarine cable brings?” … coz I can call a friend of mine in Singapore on my skype phone on dialup and still have a better conversation..

Something bothered me and I tried to get a bit more information and it came to my attention that the call was NOT made through cable BUT via SATELLITE… but they said it was fibre optic cables at the end of each sentence eh… and after calling 123 numerous times last night.. and got hold of her (after waiting IN LINE for 10 minutes) at around 2045hrs.I was even able to get the lady over there to agree with me on this as well…

So how come Dhiraagu “so called” launched a product which did not really exist in the first place… I mean yeah they have the cable in Maldives now and it’s going to work as well for sure… but just because Wataniya was going to launch their cable sometime soon , Dhiraagu wanted to FAKE a whole event JUST to TOUCH MALDIVES first.

Hopefully Dhiraagu’s services will be able to make best use of the fiber optic cables soon, but today at this second.. I don’t think so… throughout the whole ceremony they were only able to say.. WE WILL, WE CAN, WE COULD and more of WE WILL… but there was not a single WE HAVE…. Mere speculation, which in fact would mostly be true to be honest.. but as a customer I would have loved to see something there…. ( but remember… its not fully functional so can’t happen)

Anyway back to the point… having a ceremony saying “official launch of the Submarine Cable” and not showing us anything of the submarine cable.. and faking a whole conversation with the president, claiming it was the first call made through the cable abroad, while in reality it was a normal satellite call.. it’s a bit funny isn’t it…

It’s not funny actually.. it’s just another tactic to ‘andhun alhuvaning” the general public… simple as that ..

Dhiraagu Set to Reduce Internet Prices

2006-09-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Guess it has been a while hasnt it?

Anyways jus a lil update on whats going to happen to dhiraagu's internet prices in a bit. TAM has recently released the tarrifs for dhiraagu's products such as dedicated internet access , national leased lines, a totally new ADSL package with a price cap and their wifi hotspot usage fees.

The dedicated internet access reduction will have little intrest for most ppl ( coz they are mostly targeted to large corporations and such. but i can tell you it offers significant reduction in prices.
details as on http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=67

what is more interesting is the price capped ADSL packages, 256/64 speeds with 1:75 contention as compared to existing 1:200 on the home ADSL (baraboa) package, starting at MRF 430 and Price Capping at MRF 690. Beautiful!!!! looks better to me than the focus 64kbps connection.. :) cheers... just hurry up with the formalties and get on with releasing the package.... we'll be lining up in front of the door.... finally an 'unlimited' ADSL package.... yay

(link http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=69)

wifi rates for dhiraagu hotspots are out.. i can't say i'm thrilled with the rates... MRF 10 for half an hour? 30 for 2 hrs... thats a bit too much isnt it?.. i really don't think i can afford to get online with dhiraagu wifi.. targeted at travellers maybe?... too bad.. i was dreaming of sippin a coffee at westpark an typing up stuff for the blog....

(link http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=68)

anyways.. dhiraagu.. cheers.. good on ya.. lets see what focus infocom can do... personally i think that ADSL package would be very very competitive to the starter 64kbps package offered by focus infocom for 650 bucks. for an additional 40 bucks you are probably going to get a better speed an a more stable connection.

toodles

Nation-wide Wireless Network in Maldives

2006-09-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

Are you planning to deploy a Wide Area Network? Would you like to do it in the shortest time possible, with as less hassles as possible for deployment and at attractive costs?

Welcome to smartBridges. The preferred solutions partner for deploying Wide Area Wireless Networks.

Imagine covering an entire island with cables and wires. Possible, but it would take months, if not years. It would cause huge investment for deployment. Add to it, the cost of equipment and most would be ready to give up the idea. Now try to repeat the same for 200 islands!

The government of Maldives was facing a huge challenge when it decided to leap frog and provide Internet access to the all the people. The immediate answer was wireless. But, the question is, how to achieve this? The wireless market is flooded with products, but most of them focused on “Indoors” applications. The option of using indoor devices, with long-range antennae does exist. However, is this the right solution?

The island of Male required a complete wireless solution deployed across the city. This would give instant broadband access to users in offices, homes, schools, Government offices etc. Visitors, consultants and tourists to the island who carry laptops with either built in WiFi or as an add-on, would also have the ability to connect to the open node free of charge for the duration of their stay. Local Internet users would find the wireless features useful as more areas are covered with the airPoint PRO Outdoor, and users who may be in the more congested telephone circuit locales would also benefit from the new technology.

Further, it was also required to connect the various islands. The sea in between made it very difficult to lay cable/ wires for achieving network connectivity. Moreover, there were the questions of salt water, moisture, extreme weather to be answered.

To such a complex requirement, smartBridges presented the right solution – the Outdoor Wireless. No Other company has such a complete range of outdoor wireless products as smartBridges. The airPoint PRO outdoor span the area with their coverage, thus bringing entire island together on a single network.

High Speed, high reliability and High ruggedness make the smartBridges solution an absolute fit for deploying long distance networks.

Encased in a weatherproof NEMA 4X box, the rugged airPoint PRO Outdoor is indeed the best solution for the Island, for it easily withstands the frequently harsh weather conditions of high rain, winds and tropical heat! Built to withstand temperatures ranging from -40 Deg C to 65 Deg C, the airPoint PRO Outdoor is the perfect solution for this tropical paradise.

smartBridges covered the entire capital city island of the Maldives with its solution. The whole island is spanned by the wireless network equipment from smartBridges. airPoint PRO Outdoor and airBridge are placed at strategic locations all over the island. Now the race is on to cover the rest of the islands and also provide backhaul links amongst the islands.

Why smartBridges solutions?

* Easy to Deploy and Install
* Easy to manage- remotely!!
* Extremely rugged and reliable
* Low power requirements
* Quick ROI

The above article was taken from the smartBridges website

Is anybody aware there is a Nation-wide Wireless Network in the Maldives or the so called 200 island wide Hotspot in the Maldives?

Definitely I was not aware. I was aware there are some smartBridges and airPoint PRO equipment throughout Male' during my various analysis projects but was not aware of such a 200 island wide Hotspot as mentioned in the customer success stories on smartBridges website.

Dhiraagu vulnerable to Social Engineering

2006-06-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

This is the details of a social engineering attack pulled on Dhiraagu (for a good cause again).

What is Social Engineering?

Social Engineering uses influence and persuasion to deceive people by convincing them that the social engineer is someone he is not, or by manipulation. As a result, the social engineer is able to take advantage of the people to obtain information with or without the use of technology.

The texts in italics in this article are extracts from the book “Art of Deception” by Kevin D. Mitnick that gives you details of the tricks of social engineering attacks used in the case.

A friend of mine has called me to help him with his ADSL connection which keeps on dropping the signal every 2 seconds. They have recently moved to this new building and Dhiraagu has moved their ADSL also to this new building. I went to meet at him around 17:30 hrs on a Thursday.

I asked my friend for the username and password of the ADSL router which he has in order to find out what could be wrong. He didn't have that information as usual with most of us who doesnt keep those type of information in a safe place. I then asked him whether he has the ADSL username and password in case if I have to reset the router back to factory settings to access it. He didn't have that either.

I called up Dhiraagu 123 from my mobile (which has no relation to the address where the ADSL was connected) and directly told the guy that I don't have my username and password of my ADSL connection and the only information which I can give him is the address where the ADSL is connected to.

The Direct Attack: Just Asking for It

Anybody gutsy enough to call and claim to be the owner or whatever will likely to be taken at his word. Unless it’s obvious that he doesn’t know the terminology, or if he’s nervous and stumbles over his words, or in some other way doesn’t sound authentic, he may not even be asked a single question to verify his claim. That’s exactly what happened here with the support person.

The guy looked up the database and simply gave me the username, I then asked for the password, he gave me the same. Then I asked him for the username of the ADSL router (which Dhiraagu provides), he gave me the username and password for the router too.

The Direct Attack: Just Asking for It

Many social engineering attacks are intricate, involving a number of steps and elaborate planning, combining a mix of manipulation and technological know-how

A skillful social engineer can often achieve his goal with a simple. Straightforward, direct attack. Just asking outright for the information may be all that’s needed—as you’ll see.

Knowledge of a company’s lingo, and of its corporate structure—its various office and departments, what each does and what information each has—is part of the essential bag of tricks of the successful social engineer.

What if somebody uses Social Engineering to harm these organisations and its customers?

ROL :: NO TERMS & CONDITIONS ??

2006-05-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

For the past 3 weeks I have been trying to get hold of ROL’s “terms and conditions” which I believe is something which each customer SHOULD be having.

Unfortunately I haven’t been successful and from my knowledge there are NO such documents in ROL. I will point out a few interesting facts I have come across while trying to get hold of this document from ROL!

Broken Links in the Website
The links for “Terms of Use” and “Privacy Policy” does not work

No Reply to email
It has been more than 2 weeks since I have sent an email to almost all the email addresses which were posted in contact us page in ROL’s website.
http://www.rol.net.mv/contents/Contact-Details.php

Telephone calls
Several telephone calls have been made to ROL and the girl who answered the phone had no idea what these documents were. So had a fun time trying to make her understand what they were for 5 minutes or so every time a call was made. Hehe. I asked to be passed to a senior personel and not once was able to reach anyone who was willing to answer me since they were all too busy at that moment or too busy at a meeting.

And while I was discussing my frustration with a friend of mine, unsurprisingly he also had the same problem. He was told that the copy was with their legal adviser for modification and that no applicable T&C is available at the moment. If i was him I would have brought to their attention that the availability of the currently practicing copy of the terms & conditions is a customers' legal right

So the question I ask out loud is that isn’t it a LEGAL RIGHT for each customer to be given these documents when applications are made? and ALSO for the fact that the application form asks the applicants to sign saying they understand the terms and conditions.

Lets see how the public reacts to this issue, somehow legally I think there is an issue when ROL makes the customer signs stating that they agree to these terms and conditions, but when they request to view these terms and conditions, they can’t have it? This is unacceptable on many levels and TAM as the regulating body should take action against ROL.

In comparison, that the T&C and the applicable usage policy of dhiraagu internet service is readily available on their website

I urge anyone who uses focus to file a complaint with TAM at their hotline on 332 3344, or email them at secretariat@tam.gov.mv

Comments for the Telecom Policy 2006-2010

2006-04-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

Telecommmunications Authority of Maldives (TAM) has recently opened Telecom Policy 2006-2010 for public comments. Since I am commenting for it, thought I would also share my comments with the viewers of the DigitalSquid blog to see their ideas as well.

The draft for this policy can be downloaded from TAM website.

Comments for Maldives Telecommunication Policy 2006-2010

The Introduction of this policy is basically the same thing from the policy of 2000-2005. I believe the past 5 years has brought enough change for us to write a better introduction than this.

Objective 1.1: Implement “one service one tariff” concept.

Even though the following action under the following objective was there in the policy of 2000-2005 to abolish the difference in telecommunication charges, we are at 2006 still studying the commercial impact of abolishing these differences.

Objective 1.1: Reduce the disparity in telecommunication charges between Male and the rest of the country.

Action 1.1.1: Abolish the differences in telecommunication charges among all inhabited islands, within a period of 3 years.

This action needs to be taken immediately and the difference in telecommunication charges to be abolished rather than studying the impacts of it for another 2-5 years.

Objective 3.3: The regulator should have a converged role of regulating IT and telecommunications.

I believe the following action should be added.

• The regulators skills should be enhanced for them to meet the challenges in regulating the operators.

The regulator should have enough people trained on the aspects of IT as well as telecommunications to properly regulate the issues. Unless there are trained people from these aspects, the regulator would not be in a position to properly regulate anything. People who knows IT / telecommunications should be there rather than some Management gurus who doesn’t have the knowledge or experience of IT and telecommunications. It should be more of a technical management than any other type of management.

Objective 4.2: Increase infrastructure competition

Action 4.2.3: Assign certain frequency bands as license free bands and allow installation of infrastructure for individual and scientific / experimental purposes.

- Assign the entire FCC assigned license free ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) and Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (UNII) bands as license free bands and allow them to operate as per FCC regulations with power outputs and spectrum usage.

- Assign the Military whatever frequencies they require and keep the scope to move the existing operators in these frequencies to another unallocated frequency block depending on the requirements. Everywhere else the Military is on top of the priority list and gets what ever they want before any others get a chunk of the spectrum. They should be given priority, as they are our protectors.

Even though the following action under the following objective was there in the policy of 2000-2005 for the management of the Internet domain names of the Maldives, the action has not been taken to this date and it was not even mentioned in the policy of 2006-2010.

Objective 4.2: Make available resources required for the telecommunication operators.

Action 4.2.5: Assign the Regulator with the function of registration and management of the Internet domain names of the Maldives.

The .mv domains or the Top Level Domain (TLD) for the Internet domain names of the Maldives is still under Dhiraagu which is just one of the operators.

The .mv is also believed to be the most expensive TLD which costs around USD 93.39 / year with .tv next to it with USD 34.95 / year. This could be one reason why most of the people wouldn’t want to go for a .mv domain.

The Regulator could take a small fee such as USD 0.25 / domain to maintain the list of domains as ICAAN does for most of the TLD’s and let the Operators, ISP’s and other registered / accredited Domain & Hosting companies to play the role of registration and management of the Internet domain names of the Maldives.

Objective 5.1: Increase awareness of telecommunications and ICT

ICT seminars should also be added to Action 5.1.3

Also another point should be added to encourage to form local ICT groups and to support them to conduct various ICT programs to create awareness among the public.

I welcome comments to my article as well as comments to the Telecom Policy 2006-2010.

Digitalsquid is back!

2006-04-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

This is just to inform to any reader that we are back and we will be doing our best to bring u the latest news and updates on issues which we find interesting in the IT/Telecom sector in Maldives.

Due to some problems (a.k.a "being busy" and "lazy"), we have not been able to update the blog and have recieved numerous complains from poeple.. hehehe.. so thats abt it, we r back and hope u like what we have to say, if not, just have a say and make a comment or even send a mail .. Or even if you wanna be part of it, you are more than welcome to join us.

Also, this time around, we are planning to look at the media/multimedia sector in Maldives as well as much as we can.

And again to make things clear to anyone who is interested in reading these... we are NOT against ANY person, or company or whatsoever... we are just a coupla poeple who wants things to change for the better in Maldives ( in our related fields that is ) .... we arent writing stuff anonymously... we just want poeple to know the issues and everyone has the right to know whats effecting them , dont they .

so cheers and have a nice day

note: now www.digitalsquid.org will be working as well.. so no need to use http://digitalsquid.blogspot.com everytime ...

The People of Baa Atoll are lying - Wataniya

2006-04-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

On February 16, 2006 TAM Calls for feedback on Wataniya Coverage and to complement this work, TAM was collecting information on the coverage and quality of Wataniya’s mobile service. The information was collected via a 24 hour recording hotline, the telephone number of which is 3322 050.

People from a number of islands have called into the hotline to give their feedback, the bulk of which relates to coverage issues or “Range Problems” as they are commonly referred to as.

Details of Complain Calls to TAM Hotline

Due to numerous complaints received from customers, during the feedback programme, TAM requested Wataniya to investigate the matter.

As a result, Wataniya conducted the following study on Baa Atoll to check the voice and GPRS signal coverage and quality. According to Wataniya, these tests covered voice and GPRS samples in islands of Baa Atoll.

Complaint Investigation Report on Baa Atoll by Wataniya

Wataniya's Report clearly says that out of the 9 complaints from the 9 islands, 8 are faulty complaints meaning that the People of Baa Atoll are lying. This is one of the greatest joke I ever heard. One day Wataniya's lie detectors will claim that the whole Maldives is lying.

Cream of IT or the Cream of Chicken Soup?

2006-01-17T00:30:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: the following contents are from an email received by one of our readers who happens to be anonymous (aren’t they all?), apparently had a go at Focus Infocom. The email is presented in its entirety on this blog, and does not present any view, options or involvement by digitalsquid blog. The events presented in the following article may or may not be true and we cannot confirm it at the moment but it is interesting enough for us to present it in the blog for comments by our viewers and what they think. Further this mail has relevance to one of our articles in this blog titled "How Secure is ROL's high speed network? How Secure is your Data?" which is again one reason that the email is published. We stress that this email is published purely for discussion, and if actual , and if actually happened, maybe someone at focus infocom or anyone else might be able to shed light on the issue. Of coz we do not recommend that anyone tries this at home or elsewhere to see if it works. Comments are highly welcomed, but any comments that are directed personally and irrelevant to the topic will be removed.

--------------------------------------------------------

A previous article here has clearly hinted the real vulnerability in his article about the ROL's security issue. The dumb and the dumbers did not get an idea of what he has pointed out. Instead they pulled his tail taking some webserver issue and log2space issue which was not the real vulnerability or the security issue. After reading the article i thought i will give some try to see if it is true or close to true and to my amuzement, The ROL's network equipments can be managed by just anybody using SNMP.

Managing the Interfaces of the Routers! (Images are self explanatory in most cases)

A peak at the virtual pptp interfaces. The numbers beginning with ROL are ROL pptp usernames.

Tried to see if the interface can be disabled. Success!

Disabled

Re-enabling the interface.

A glance at the traffic statistics of the pptp users.

A glance at the interfaces.

A glance at the system info.

Trying to disable Rahul’s pptp interface.

Succeed!!

Disabled

A glance at the system info of the linux machine.

Disabling first Ethernet interface

Disabling second Ethernet interface.A peak at the Cable Routers & their interfaces. The disabling of this interface led to lose the connectivity to JSAT side of the ROL’s network. At least it took them more than 4 hours to bring the network back to normal.

A glance at the interfaces.

A glance at the ARP info.

Still more glances at the ARP.

Disabling the upstream interfaces of the cable routers

Disabling the internal interfaces (fbus1 and fbus2) and upstream interfaces and downstream interfaces.

I hope ROL fixes this problem at the earliest

How Secure is ROL's high speed network? How Secure is your Data?

2006-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

A boring week with nothing much to do or to celebrate, I connected a RF splitter to the J-SAT cable at our home to split the CATV cable and connected a cable modem. The cable did not lock as the power was way too low due to the splittings. We had another cable from MESCO which doesn’t have any splits. So I just split that into two and then connected the cable modem. Bingo, my modem signal is locked. Before I go any further let me try to give you all some info about the type of VPNs ROL uses now.

ROL is running on PPTP-VPNs now! What is a PPTP-VPN?

PPTP VPNs offer legacy authentication mechanisms such as PAP, CHAP, MS-CHAP, and MS-CHAPv2, with the strongest being MS-CHAPv2. MS-CHAPv2 is also used in Cisco’s LEAP and EAP-FAST phase-0. MS-CHAPv2 can be broken using the ASLEAP cracking tool for Linux and Windows. A tutorial exploiting the weakness of PPTP-VPN with Asleap and Auditor can be found here

PPTP tunnels use an IP connection to form an encrypted tunnel for data transport. The tunnel has its own IP subnet (in the case of ROL, 202.21.*.*), and after the tunnel is formed between client and server, a static route is entered into both hosts so that all future data traffic is sent through the tunnel. However, the original IP subnet (in the case of ROL on jsat cable, 10.99.*.*) on the Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network can still be used for data transfer, such as port scanners and other hacking tools. The high-speed connectivity over the HFC network not only makes it quicker, easier and cheaper for customers to get the service but also enables Whackers (black hat hackers) to enjoy a number of open ports and services that are in the pipeline. Without a personal firewall in place, the client and server devices are still open to IP attacks.

PPTP uses Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption, which uses the RC4 stream cipher. While MPPE-128 is a reasonably strong encryption scheme, it’s the authentication mechanism (MS-CHAPv2) that makes PPTP weak.

Connecting to ROL HFC Network:

Then I connected an Ethernet cable between my laptop and the modem and got an IP from the 10.99. range (original IP subnet). Fired up Nmap to see if there are any open ports and found some machines with port 80 open, ran Firefox and connected to one of those machines. Firefox brought me to a web page of some sort of web server called WAMPP with access to a MySQL database. I was even able to create my own databases without any authentications. Could this be a machine of an individual user? Could this be a machine of ROL? I leave it for the readers to do their own research and find out for themselves. (Hint: There are other interesting ports too!)

Before turning my mind to other interesting ports. I got stumbled into ROL’s Subscriber Management Software which runs on IP 202.21.176.234 externally and IP 192.168.50.1 internally. They run really interesting software called Log2Space from Spacecom Technologies Limited, India. Those of you who are interested in learning how this software works could see a demo of it on the Spacecom website. Click here for a demo.

Did some further scanning and ran a couple of tools by pressing keys and buttons here and there and I couldn’t even believe my eyes on where I end up. Where was I walking into wearing the dark black court? In fact I was in a position to map the whole network with more than 20 different segments and was also in a position to throw off individual users or a whole bunch of users from the network by pressing a couple of buttons. For those of you who are interested in the logical design of the ROL network may download this Visio network map of ROL.

For a second I thought, is this the security we talk about? Is this the industry standards and practices that ROL follows as required of an ISP (Internet Service Provider)?

A word to the tech team at ROL: Don’t mislead your Managing Director in to thinking that you have the best security that is up to the industry standards. Humans do make mistakes. Humans learn by their mistakes. So admit your mistakes to your boss, get the issues resolved internally or externally and then learn from that experience rather than trying to hide the facts and mislead your own boss. If you mislead him, he will unknowingly mislead the general public.

Some of us might think that we need a rocket scientist who has a law degree to perform such a task but in reality somebody who has a little bit of networking knowledge with a few network tools could perform such a task in a few minutes.

Dhiraagu Mail Server Issues/ Focus VPN...

2006-01-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

Just an update.. dhiraagu is appreantly having some major issues with their mailservers.... focus is implementing VPN for all its customers.. no more free internet...more on these issues sooon...

ta for now

ROL..Free Internet Continues...

2005-12-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

..or at least for me.... here's how it goes.. squid did say the issue was resolved but i personally found it to be unresolved...

basic story: had an old cable modem.... i had hooked up to a mesco line and powered on ever since the free ROL issue came about... welll for the first week im pretty sure i didnt get a connection off it... so i assumed it was coz it was disconnected... or suspended.. (modem was previously issued by focus).. basically.. jus that.. NO CONNECTION....

fast forward to today... i dont know when it happened... i saw the CABLE lights steady..... which meant that it had got a connection.... hooked it up to a lappy... and.. bam... thats it... i was surfin all the way to digitalsquid.blogspot.com... :D

anyone else still gettin free net?

oh.. of coz.. screenshots.. look closely and u'll know that the the IP on the system here is in the range of ROL's IP Range.. so this is def.. ROL internet :).. not mesco's gaming system

Dhiraagu, WIFI....

2005-12-14T01:15:00.000-08:00

Saw something like this outside jade bistro café, asked around.... well supposedly jade's wifi is actually their own... maybe they use a dhiraagu connection.

i wonder why dhiraagu is not setting up wifi hotspots...? male' is a relatively small place and for a company like dhiraagu it probably wouldnt be cost prohibitive... maybe they are already planning on rolling it out...

just a thought... just a thought.....

Dhiraagu Vandalism!

2005-12-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be a Dhiraagu add somewhere in Male'.
But no matter how much you hate Dhiraagu this is not the right way to go... although its funny i have to say :) . But again, please dont do this kinda stuff....cheers!

Convert you Gmail a/c into an online Hard Drive.

2005-12-13T02:34:00.000-08:00

I just wanna share this pretty neat little software which is very handy for me to share music and large files on the web using my Gmail a/c. Basicallysing this you u can make the 2GB inbox in your Gmail a/c, a web hard drive where you can store a lot of files.

First download the software Gmail drive from here http://viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm and run the setup and the Gmail drive will be shown in My Computers as a hard drive. So just login to it and drag and drop files back and forth .

But before swapping files or anything you need to change some settings in your or else all the files would be going to your inbox as attachments. So heres what to do

After logging into your mail account, go to Settings and goto Filters and create a new filter and in the subject put GMAILFS: ( by default all stuff coming via gmail drive places GMAILFS: infront of each filename). Click Next, and tick "Skip the Inbox(Archive It)" and also tick "Apply the Label" and and create a new label called "Archived Files" and create filter.

Thats it, you have a 2GB online hard drive. I have been using this for a while now and its been pretty handy so thought ill share it. If you need a bit more information on this, this comes with a neat helpfile as well.. so have a look in it or you can ask here as well.

Been asked the question....

2005-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

WHY??

"Why do you guys at digitalsquid bother with this? you're only puttin yourself in harm's way.. u can't win against big companies like Dhiraagu... and wat do you get out of this anyway? its better to mind your own business.. "

one thing to make clear....this is not about winning or losing.. its not abt bringing down dhiraagu or any other company to its knees... we probably couldn't even if we tried....we have our own reasons and its def not to attack one company.. we try to be unbaised as possible.. and we'd like to think wat we say and discuss here.. makes a bit of positive difference somewhere... to real people... encouraging ppl to discuss their issues is always a positive step.. to improve on a public service... everyone has their own interest areas.. and ours just happens to be telcos and IT.....

as for listing the flaws that are found... our approach is that it contributes to faster fixes and better quality and secure services... what's wrong with that? listing a problem someone has dosent mean we hate them!... please get over that.. whoever thinks so... we don't hate ROL or wataniya or dhiraagu...

so.. jus thought i'd create a little poll an see wat the readers say... why we should or shouldnt be doing this... and of coz.. we'd love comments as well...

thanks...

WarDriving and WEP Cracking

2005-12-11T01:36:00.000-08:00

After Wardriving through the main roads of Malé on a Friday late afternoon with my HP iPAQ 6365, I was able to find more than 100 wireless networks. Out of this more than 50% of the wireless networks are OPEN (even without the least bit of security). The rest was encrypted with WEP encryption which is known to be crackable.

Follows is a simple tutorial to crack wep using Auditor and a wireless card (Proxim 8470-WD).

Introduction:

This tutorial explains how to crack most WEP encrypted Access Points out there. The tools used will be as follows:

Airodump
Aireplay
Aircrack

As for wireless cards, i recommend any Prism , Orinoco , or Atheros based cards (i used the Atheros based card mentioned above).

Getting Started:

Let's see, First thing you are going to want to do is charge your laptop to the top (aireplay and aircrack drain the battery quite a bit) Next you are going to want to load up your favourite live CD (i used Auditor final) or Linux OS, then stumble across a encrypted WLAN, use Kismet to do so.

First off you are going to want to set your wireless card to the right mode, depending on what chipset depends on what commands you have got to use:

Since my Proxim card uses madwifi, I have to place the card in pure 802.11b mode first:

iwpriv ath0 mode 2

Then change the card into monitor mode

iwconfig ath0 mode monitor

Then bring the card up

ifconfig ath0 up

Going for the kill:

Open a terminal window and fire up Airodump to sniff the packtes.

airodump ath0 tocrack

Ok so now you have got a stream of packets from your target, you see the IV column, those are whats known as 'weak key' packets, we want as many of them as we can get (500k+ is a nice number, the more the better). Now we are going to capture a 'weak key' packet from on the network we are targeting and going to flood the Access Point with it in hope that we get lots of 'weak key' replies sent out so we can eventually crack the password. So now open another terminal window and execute aireplay

aireplay -i ath0

Here we are going to grab a few packets from the Access Point until we catch a 'weak key' packet which then aireplay will ask you if you want to use to then flood the Access Point with that packet. when it asks you if it can use one of the packets hit 'y' then return, but do not choose a packet with a destination address of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF

If you flick back to your terminal with airodump running you should see the packets being captured will increase by a huge amount and with that the IV packets should also be increasing pretty damn fast aswell, if all went well in about 10mins you should have enough packets to then dump into aircrack.

Run aircrack to crack the wep from the captured file.

aircrack -q 3 -f 2 tocrack.cap

What i did there was set aircrack to read my packet file called tocrack.cap (what airodump creates). If all goes well you will get the key in a few mins.

This is a "lo-fi" version of the main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.

Happy WarDriving.

Note: some portions of the texts of this article are copied from the WEP Cracking by UmInAsHoE.

Lets have a hacking day!!!

2005-12-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

Yes, lets do have one... but before you start screaming out at me for promoting criminal activities, hear me out.. :) i know this idea would most likely be stepped on, laughed about and sometimes spit on as well... but that happens all the time so wats the difference...

i was thinkin that huge companies like dhiraagu and wataniya an ROL who's data and network security is critical to them... should have a hacking contest.... u know organised networks security analysis if you will.... we all know all systems have flaws... but it can be mitigated

if you think about it.. the idea isnt so far fetched... my idea of how it should work... example: Dhiraagu..

lets say dhiraagu sponsors contest.. the aim of the contest is to find weaknesses and flaws within their existing system... internet, mobile, data, POTS, watever....u know.. get together a band.. some food.. a bunch of nerds, script kiddes and hardcore programmers, and the rest... make a party out of it... offer cool prizes maybe.. even cash and certificates.. job offers... even...for guys who find the weaknesses or faults within the existing system... THE ONLY CONDITION BEING.... that they have to tell dhiraagu HOW they did wat they did.. to get into the system.... so that they can fix it asap...

of coz the thought of leaving the data vulberable to these type of people would prolly make dhiraagu piss in their pants... hehe but well.. can always work around it if it were organised... and of coz is always much better when u can monitor what they are doing :) but just think about how much more secure their networks would be after lets say a week contintued attacks :)

of coz an extenstion of that would be.. to encourage people to come upto dhiraagu with flaws they find without going public or using it... in return for a reward for finding such issues... again... minimize damages caused.......

plz drop ur comments on this... :)

Major Dhiraagu E-bill flaw!!!!

2005-12-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

It has been brought to our attention that there is a major flaw with the dhiraagu e-bill system, where an ebill user can view other ebill users bill details... our good friend Jaaheen informed us of this issue, and of coz furnished us with the 'proof of concept'..

of coz jaaheen who discoverd this 'loophole' was kind enough to bring this to our attention and we have been informed that senior staff of dhiraagu has been duly notified of their 'misconfiguration' and hopefully should be working on a fix as we speak..

for the post by jaaheen plz refer to his post here. thanks again jaaheen.. for giving us a ring...

in the interest of all parties concerned, including the innocent customers of dhiraagu, who's private telephone records should of coz remain private, we will not be publishing a step by step guide on how to grab other customers details (this is easier than the 5 step ROL free internet) .... altho we do know this is possible and it works.. the screenshots below show the logs we were provided less any personally identifiable information to protect the identity of the customer...

and if we do publish, the how to step by step guide before they fix it.... well it would be immoral... some of us have a bit of morality left in us even if dhiraagu does not..... and we know that this is not a problem of the customers.. and they should be spared of any 'inconvinences'...

it is just appalling that such major flaws exist in the system... it would be easier to accept something like this if this took any skill in the dark arts of hacking, programming, and software engineering... but this is something a 15 year old kid could do... Dhiraagu should be taking more care in setting up services for their customers, and i feel that it is their responisibility to ensure that such records are kept safe an that... just a few weeks back there was the proxy server issue.. and now this.???.... god knows how many other loophole are there waiting to be discovered...

or even worse.. wat if some already know of such loopholes and are keepin those facts to themselves? wat then? wat if some psychotic ex-boy/girl friend is keeping tabs on you? wat if your competitors check up on who your clients are? the possibilities are endless.........who takes responsibilty? isnt dhiraagu responsible for protection of customers data?.... to put in all reasonable effort to protect their privacy? dosent seem like they are doing what they should....

the bills are jus from random number plucked off the air.. an have no connection to each other in any way.. plz dont ask how to do this.. we dont wanna say.. we want this fixed.. of coz.. we'll keep u updated on any issues...

oh on a personal note to dhiraagu... this must be wat's called " divine retribution"....

UPDATE 12/12/05 : E- bill is back online after been taken down for repair :)

--------------------------------------
Disclaimer: This post is strictly for educational purposes only.. specially dhiraagu's... the lesson here... take more care in setting up your system, be a lil less arrogant, for you are also like the rest of us... imperfect....the next person to discover your flaws might not be as helpful as jaaheen, or we have been in pointing it out and screaming for a fix. the least you could do is send a thank you note to jaaheen.. or maybe jaa too.. while ur at it for pointing such issues out... not reprimand them for pointing out problems and asking for them to be fixed. everyone else, dont try this at home, office, or in the loo. obviously we can't take any responsibility for who's actions we dont know and puleeease... why should we take responsibility for dhiraagu's mistakes...? so we don't do that either, plus we dont like responsibility too .....oh..since this was all created from a dream jaaheen had.. this might not even be real... there is a spoon? maybe was a spoon? there is no spoon?...watever... an leave your comment.. we love to read the comments and the last one abt ROL internet was jus overwhelming :).. thanks for the support.!

ROL "loophole" fixed !! At Last

2005-12-06T04:03:00.000-08:00

We have been informed a short while back that the free internet problem have been fixed today. I know there are a lot of poeple out there who are pretty angry at us as well.. hehe. but anyway, we will be posting an article VERY SOON with details of the whole "free internet" problem, what really caused it, why it took so long to fix it and why IT WAS a fault of ROL and NOT MESCO! stay tuned.

and thanks again for the wonderful comments by the viewers!

Free ROL Internet in Male'

2005-12-03T03:02:00.000-08:00

It has come to our attention that poeple can get free internet from ROL due to a flaw in their setup. It's stupid right? but we have tried it and it works and here are your free guide to free internet from ROL

Rumors are that N**** F**** has revealed to the public that ROL internet connectivity has a leak. We tried contacting him but he didnt response. Our investigation shows that ........

5 step free internet guide
(you need to have a a cable in your house which is provided by MESCO)

1. Buy cable modem. you can get it in most of the computer stores in male'.
2. Get MESCO cable connection in your house( this is if you dont have it currently)
3. Connect the modem to the cable.
4. Connect modem to PC
5. VOLA! free Internet.

hehe. yeah i know it seems so easy and me putting it in 5 steps and telling to connect modem to PC and stuff were stupid as well. But i just wanted to break it down into 5 steps so it looks cool.. anyway what the heck!

This to me is the biggest technical flaw in the history if IT in Maldives. from what i know the poeple at ROL are sweating buckets over this and still have not been able to find a solution :) and they are 24 hrs monitoring and disconnecting poeple who they THINK are doing this and in the process disconnecting a lot of paid internet users as well.

Btw All this is for educational purposes and we will not be taking any responsibilities on anyone using this technique to get free internet..hehe..anyway who cares, use it while you can, its not ure problem, it's theirs.. so happy surfing or shud i say downloading!

(p.s. if any of you have used this pls post a comment on the blog. thanks)

Dhiraagu Proxy Server Compromised...

2005-11-09T21:43:00.000-08:00

Jaa Posted the following article on his blog... i think it still works... its sad that dhiraagu did not respond to his repeated mails pointing out the flaws...

this flaw could mean that anyone can view ppls traffic... their trends etc... capture passwords.. logins.. an god knows wat else.... dhiraagu plz respond to this now... ur prolly gonna have ppl pretending to be proxy servers or ftp servers by the end of the day....

http://jaa.technova.com.mv/archives/31-I,-Dhiraagu-proxy-server.html

i tried this out as well to see if it works... attached is screenshot of sniffers.. 10/11/2005

waiting for dhiraagu to respond to flaw asap... im a dhiraagu user an i def dont want my traffic to be intercepted... :)

UPDATE: 12/11/2005....

the issue still isnt fixed... below is a screenshot for 12/11/2005-

There has been some question as to how easy it is to do "evil" stuff with this... granted this is jus a dialup connection with a packet sniffer... but lets face it... jaa is right u CAN do a lot of things with this... setup a proxy to listen on port 8080... redirect some pages... log passwords... granted takes some time and effort... an a lil understandin of how all this works.... but doable...

and even if nothin is doable...it shouldnt be possible to view this requests.... that in itself is a big FLAW....well seems dhiraagu knows abt Jaa's post now....waitin an waitin for dhiraagu to fix it...

Hmm... wonder if focus infocom servers are the same??

_______________________________
Disclaimer: This article and opinions included in it are highly judgmental and not intended to be believed as seen. This post represents the unofficial view of the voices in my head after much debate. don’t quote me on that; don’t quote me on anything :) If u think this works.. good for you.. If u think it wont.. good for you too... The only reason we are here is coz these things if not addressed affects us users directly!! As always use grey matter as intended for use, drink lots of water, don't smoke, and wear plenty of sunscreen.

Online Privacy

2005-11-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

head over to jaa's blog.. check out this article..

http://jaa.technova.com.mv/archives/1-Battling-for-privacy-Keeping-your-computer-data-and-internet-communications-secure.html

check it out.. read it, practice it...

Psst..Dhiraagu gonna roll over!

2005-10-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

Well so i heard... for postpaid mobile packages... dhiraagu is planning to introduce roll over mins very soon... (2 weeks?.. 3 weeks?)

this service, i bet is something really useful an was one of the better features of the packages wataniya introduced...

well.. we can go on abt how they should have done it long ago... blah blah yadda yadda... but we'll be repeating ourselves so lets not bother... at least they are doing it now...

granted.. we have wataniya to thank for that.. :)

anyway... cheers to dhiraagu IF ur providing this service and continue to improve.. and same to wataniya for being the thorn in dhiraagu's butt...

UPDATE: 18th October; dhiraagu confirms the provison of rollover mins and SMS...
(http://www.dhiraagu.com.mv/newsdesk/index.php?newsid=497)

My Wife had to give birth in the Ambulance because "all circuits are busy"

2005-10-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

This is an article we recieved via e-mail.

Dear Editor

I was browsing through some websites and came across this website, and since it is about Communications and stuff i would like to write a personal experience of mine with Dhiraagu and Wataniya.

It was like a month back. My wife was pregnant with our first child and one night suddenly she was having extreme pain and i planned to take her to the hospital. I tried to call an ambulance but to my disbelief, " All Circuits are busy " song was on . My wife's sister was also with us. She was using a Wataniya Number, but i still was not able to get a simple phone call across to the hospital to get an ambulance using Dhiraagu or Wataniya even. It was like more than 5 mins before i can get through Wataniya number and get an ambulance over there.

My wife gave birth prematurely, but i would rather have had her give birth to my baby on the hospital bed rather than an ambulance bed. And all this because the two telephone companies in Maldives cannot provide a simple service. It is us who suffer.

I am not letting this go, i am hoping to take legal action against the 2 companies.

Thanks

Ahmed

ok, here is my view on this

Congratulations on having a baby and YES! are WE the poeple who have to suffer because 2 of our telecom companies are impotent? How many more poeple would have had suffered things like this because they just could "not get a connection.". I thought Dhiraagu would be better when Wataniyya comes, because they can offload more customers and provide better service to the remaining cusomers. And i thought Wataniya would be a blast, coz from what we heard and saw, we had so much high expectations. But nothing's much changed has it?

929...still more problems....

2005-10-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

Night before last.. i visited wataniya's main shop... to check up on the status of my refund.... ( i disconnected my line early september.... they had taken a deposit on my line as well as... advance for the whole month of september)... anyways i was supposed to get this refund early october...

so i took a number.. waited in line... talked to this nice girl... and another equally nice guy who came to help out... was my problem solved? did i get my advance back?

nooooooooooo.... nothing of the sort.... i was told that the bill runs at the end of the month...and thats when the refunds get processed... well my question back to them... IF the bills run at the end of the month.. shouldnt my refund be already processed since i disconnected in early september?....

so i asked them if they will be able to tell me a date when i could EXPECT a call from them regarding a refund?... their answer... they don't know......!!! so... what do they expect me to do..? wait a month more? two months more? i would expect them to give me some timeframe .. since they dont know when they are able to refund deposits and such....

on that note.. i checked up on Dhiraagu about their refund policies... i was told that it takes only 1 to 2 weeks... to process the refunds... i havent personally taken any refund from dhiraagu yet.. but if this is true.. its a shame wataniya can't do it in more than a month.....

worst part is... they were supposed to call me... i gave them my name an number.. an specifically asked them to update me on the problem next day coz they can talk to their finance dept. or whoever else they need to talk to during office hrs... nopz.. no call yet.. 2 days now.......

Villa Technologies!

2005-10-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

Ok!!! today while i was at Naaring(the place where they sell those Fujitsu stuff now) to have a look at some notebooks.While i was there i came across these desktop pc's which read "Villa Technologies" and i was like ...whats dat! it was a bit odd for me so i asked the sales lady there what this was all about and she only said this shop was a Villa shop and nothing more. So i assumed that like Villa Travels, Villa Shipping etc, the new Villa branch is Villa Technologies.........for a second i thought this pc was built on Villa Technologies :D ........ although it kinda makes sence, it's still odd to have VILLA TECHNOLOGIES printed on the CPU casing

who knows.. maybe next time if i go to buy a Pentium processor, i might come across "INTEL - VILLA INSIDE"

Dhiraagu WebSMS Secrets!!

2005-10-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

This article is really interesting... and i kid u not.. jaa's staff is the real deal... check it out...

http://jaa.technova.com.mv/2005/10/dhiraagu-websms-secrets.html

So keep on WebSMSing and always remember the = sign after the msg ;)

thanks jaa...

while ur there u might wanna check out http://jaa.technova.com.mv/2005/09/warriding.html

UPDATE: OCT 16th.. Dhiraagu has "fixed" these two issues since then... they no longer work

Commercial Homosexuality: Selling Lesbianism

2005-10-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sweet isnt it? well atleast Dhiraagu is getting what they wanted! That is for everyone to keep talking about these adds. oh maybe i'm wrong! When wataniyya used "we are close now" ,maybe this is Dhiraagu trying to say " we are MUCH closer now". Whatever it is, "sex sells" doesnt it? and using homosexuality in advertisements is one of the fastest growing trends in the world of advertising.The inclusion over the past twenty years of intentional homosexual themes in print advertising has been well documented. (The same trend can be seen in other media as well, but print advertising is by far the focus of more scholarly work to date.)

Throughout history, no advertising ploy has tested, reformed, and redefined the limits of appeal and alienation as often as visual depictions of sexuality. It is no secret that advertizers will go to great lengths to grab and maintain attention of customers or potential consumers and that is what Dhiraagu is doing. Now that they have some competition, they DO have to take 2 steps for every step Wataniyya takes and actually i believe they are doing it very successfully .. hehehe..

Honestly i don't think Dhiraagu is or needs to put in much effort, coz wataniyya is helping them since their marketing strategies(from what i have seen) and advertisements suck.. so Dhiraagu can easily do something better and modify wataniyyyaa's concepts and bring it out as their own and look much better.(eq. stealing wataniyya colors / making rates much cheaper everytime wataniyya does / the latest billboard advertisements.. etc)

and before i finish, i really would have liked their hands to be on each others asses :) , would have been more appealing right??

Oodles Revisited...

2005-10-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

jus thought i would bring one of the blogs more interesting articles back to light.... :)

http://digitalsquid.blogspot.com/2005/06/oodles-of-money.html

Wataniya Wish List

2005-10-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Same as with the dhiraagu wishlist!

- i would like to see proper and full coverage of maldives as per their intended plans.

- i def would like their customer service ppl to be better trained. and more informed...

- i wish wataniya would call an give me back my money which they had taken in advance ... ( they are supposed to call me back early oct)

Dhiraagu Wish list

2005-10-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

I’m jus trying to start off a list of things that I would like to see from dhiraagu, now I know for a fact some employees of dhiraagu do read this Blog.. so here’s hoping that we individuals can get our message across..

This is the way it works… comments….everyone who wants to see a new/improved service, product, features, fix problems…. In other words… stuff that u wish dhiraagu did should post comments…

We will start one up for Wataniya as well…..

Lets see how far this wish list goes….

- I’d like a feature that enables me to see how many free minutes I have on my phone. Without doing all that calclutaions on my phone or from ebill.. maybe something simple like a txt to 131?

- I’d like to see dial up charges reduced to normal call rates… (25 laari per min ) at least

- I want a bigger pipe… 512kbps at 1:20 just doesn’t cut it

- I also want the bandwidth limits on the starter and intermediate packages to be increased. ( or do we have to wait till the submarine cable comes along)

Ramazan Sweetness!

2005-10-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

everyone seems to be playing a bit nice for ramazan… an it seems dhiraagu and Wataniya are no exceptions… Dhiraagu announced their savings package recently as outlined below…

• Dial-up Internet customers will be able to enjoy a 36% discount in dial up Internet charges.

• ADSL broadband customers will receive 50% more megabytes of traffic allowance in their next billing month.

• Mobile prepaid customers will receive 20 FREE SMS every time they recharge their account.

• Mobile prepaid customers will receive 10 FREE minutes for every Rf100 they use.

• Mobile postpaid customers who make a call of 15 minutes duration between 0000hrs and 0800hrs will receive up to 15 FREE minutes extra for the call.

• Fixed line customers on the Friends and Family package will receive the 10% discount on national calls throughout the day (currently applies only during off-peak hours).

• All calls longer than 3 minutes made by fixed line residential customers during the month of Ramazan will be automatically entered into a lucky draw to qualify for exciting prizes. (my note: oooh I love exciting prizes)

(http://www.dhiraagu.com.mv/newsdesk/index.php?newsid=491)

Not bad… altho I personally didn’t find the discount package for the postpaid mobiles that useful… yeah.. Maybe it would make a difference during ramazan… will have to see…. But all in all… this is a nice… something good for ramazan J

Wataniya has also started up issuing their sim cards at 100 bucks a piece… up till 05 nov… an their prepaid customers get 50 bucks free credit… really good value for money for the connections… I mean if u want a postpaid package also u could pick up a prepaid package with the 50 extra bucks an the connections would have cost u only 50 bucks…..u can always transfer it to a postpaid later if u want.. the first change is free they say…..

(http://www.wataniya.mv/)

Wataniya:- What is easier now?

2005-09-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

First off this is not about what is technically better or what will be... this is ONLY about my experience...as a customer of wataniya...

EARLY AUGUST: - Made the switch in early August... waited in line like all guys do when they are getting a new gadget to play with...... heck i even got one for my sister while i was at it......always had the gut feeling that i should have waited for a while before making the switch.. but hey.. like i said..wanted to give them the chance to prove themselves... the very first day i started to use the number problems seems to popup... one being.. there was no proper coverage in villigili... i mean c'mon... i can live with the fact that it would be hard to setup wataniya antennas in remote parts of the country but not being able to properly cover villigili?? thats supposed to be a part of male'!!!

my call to 929... "they are terribly sorry abt whats happening" we'll get people to call u back... call me back they did... 3 times... but noooo no coverage in villigili....but seriously no one could tell me why this was happening... okey i forgave them... being their 1st week an all...

MID TO LATE AUGUST:- "Get thru the first time?".... not likely... okey to wataniya's credit most of my calls were to dhiraagu... but even for the ones to wataniya... it wasnt exactly impressive... i didn't notice such an impoved call quality... maybe my phone sucked? or phone of the person i was calling to sucked? well lets leave it at that...

The worst thing about my experinces with wataniya was their TXT system.... i thought they would have their txt system in place so that i could as usual txt whoever i wanted to txt.. internationally and locally... Not so it seems... my friends and releatives and business contacts abroad were not gettin my txts.... UK, Malaysia, New Zealand... nop.. none of those places...

so off i went to call 929... you would be surprised at the variety of responses i got...
Them: "We're in the process of setting up the international txt system. your txt might not be recived by the recipient!"
Me: " So do i get charged for that text coz, my phone said the txt was sent?"
Them: "Maybe.. if it reaches (wataniya) network"

WTF!!! why should i get charged for something they couldnt deliver? its their freaking problem not mine... and if they are testing it out they should announce it publicly.. that they are not ready with it.. an they should not charge for something they are testing... like dhiraagu did with MMS... at least with dhiraagu... they didn't owe us anythin when they were testing it out coz we got it for free...

okey so i call 929 later..
Me: "is it possible for me to get the bill information to date coz i wanna see if i was billed for those txts"
Them: " sorry we don't have bill details to tell you now...bill information can only be viewed when bill is run."

SO now what? i wait till THEY are well an ready? to see if i've been wrongly billed?or if it was a mistake on my side?

and days goes by with few more calls to 929... same type of responses.. some say i might be billed. others say i might not.. others don't really have a freaking clue what they are doing there at wataniya customer services prolly....

Thing is.. my work and my personal commitments require that i have to txt overseas... now everytime i wanna send a text.. i have to go thru the process of removing my wataniya sim.. inserting the dhiraagu one and sending it... and later re-insertin the dhiraagu sim to see if i can recieve the txts?... bloody hell... who's life is good now?.. who do i wanna share it with?

SEPTEMBER
last blow... my bill came... so naturally i wanted to check out those txts.. to see if i've been billed... for the non recipt ones... the bill is a summation so... i call 929....

ME: "i would like a detailed itemised bill for the last month"
THEM: " We charge MRF 15/-"
ME: " fine.. charge it i wanna see it"
THEM:"we can give u one for next month"
ME: (Thinking): how can they give me a detailed bill for next month when next month hasnt even run yet?"
ME: " i want an itemised bill for the bill u sent me.. thats all i want"
THEM: " well then, u come to our shop..talk to them.. they'll do something for you"

This is absurd.... i know wataniya is a startup an i know dhiraagu has the first mover advantage... an dhiraagu is the evil bloodsucking corporation.... but as a CUSTOMER i don't CARE how hard or easy it is for them to tweak their network...or agree on international texting arrangements... or provide real time billing information... as a CUSTOMER all i know is dhiraagu does this and wataniya dosent do that... an thats what counts... and as a customer the availablity and convinence is what matters.... an of coz.. wataniya is running me TWICE wat dhiraagu costs me... so another reason to go back...

Maybe wataniya launced too early for their own good.. maybe the date was forced on them.. whatever their resaons.....the customer is not going to CARE!!!

Tomorrow i'm off to wataniya... close down my account.... maybe i'll be lucky enuf if they give me an itemised bill.. lets see what happens.

Sure.. Wataniya will improve their services and products... they have to... but as a customer i'm not gonna hang around till they do with crippled services and products and support jus coz they are new...... gimme a holler when they are good an ready.!!!

There is some truth in the saying " first impressions last! "

An Bad Encounter with "Focus Infocom"

2005-09-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

In my previous comments i did say i never had any problems with focus infocom ... and i did emphasize myself on the word "YET" ,, and they day have come... from 5th of this month i have had NO internet connection and till today even , they have not been able to fix the problems... down below is a small review of the whole thing...( all times are approximate and rounded of to the nearest hr.. hehe)

5 September

9 pm :: this was the first tiem i noticed my internet connection had gone. I thought it a small problem and i just ignored it thinking it would be ok by morning.

6 September

10 am :: I make my first phone call to focus (320880) and the guy to whome i was forwarded asks me my telephone number and that he will get back to me in a little while.

12 am :: i make my second call and another guy this times asks me to see if IP is detected and when to turn modem power off and reboot pc etc... well i didnt say a thing, just did what he asked... well , no progress... he also asks for my number and tells me that hell get back to be in a short while..

3 pm:: 3rd call, and they still have no idear whats wrong and asks for my number AGAIN!!!

5 pm:: 4th call for the day, nothing happening at all and they say its not their peoblem, its a MESCO cable problem... and i tell the guy that thats not my problem coz i pay Focus for the service and they should be responsible, and AGAIN my number was noted down and i asked them if they were really noting down my number coz thats the 4th time you guys have noted down my number and after telling "migulhaaalanee" i have never heard from them..

7th September

9 am:: First call for the day and they say its a MESCO problem and they will contact them and let me know , and as usual noted down my number.. hehe

12 pm:: nothng new, another guy tells me MESCO problem and they have told mesco about it

3 pm:: i made a complain to MESCO was made and they say that its not their problem

3 pm:: same time focus again tells that its MESCO problem and not theirs!

5 pm:: Focus still says cable problem while MESCO says not their problem and the whole night goes fingerpointing at each other

7:30 pm:: 2 technicians from MESCO come and check the modem and the cable as well as the splitter and they say there is no problem and the problem is with focus

( no more phone calls could be made that night, dhiraagu says all the circuits are busy.. hehe)

8th September

9 am:: Seems like they have agreed that there is a slight power variation in the cable something and thats the reason for the problem, and said they will fix it soon. and notes down my number AGAIN!

12 pm:: i call them to see if there is any progress and there is NONE, the guys says the problem have been forwarded to the engineers and i said that its been 4 days for me without any internet and all this is causing a lot of problems for me and my work and more blah blah!

3 pm:: i call and there is no progress , and since the nect day was going to be friday and i was aware that there was not gonna be anything done to repair this on friday... so after more complaining they said they would connect wireless internet to my place temporarily till everything is fixed, ok i agreed

7 pm:: a technicial arrives from Focus and tries to do the setup and there was no signal :) and after 30 mins work he had to give up and that he will be back in a short while

8:30pm:: the technician arrives with reinforcement, one more technician and some long poles, and after an hr of work, there was still no signal.. tried putting transmitter inside poles to i dont know what!.. hehe,

9th September

Whole friday goes on with no news from them and i did not call either, still no connection ...

lets see how this whole thign goes... i believe this post is too long now, so i will write a summary report and my views on the service of FOCUS INFOCOM in another post!

Haveeru News via Dhiraagu MMS

2005-09-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

Dhiraagu have signed a deal with Haveeru News Agency to provide Haveeru news to mobile phones of DHiraagu customers via MMS..

You have to sms HAVEERU NEWS to 131 to recieve the daily updated news.

I believe this is a very handy feature for mobile users and im sure we are gonna see more of this from Dhiraagu in the near future

to read the full article on Haveeru: please go to

http://www.haveeru.com.mv/?page=details&cat=urwbwK&id=28819

So Fed Up of Focus Infocom!!!

2005-08-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Grrrr... almost 2 bloody days of dropping my connection and not being able to connect!!!!

this happens every bloody month.. : i wanted focus coz i didnt want to be limted by download limits.......this is even worse... not having connectivity...

what happens when i call up customer service?... "we'll get one of our technicans to call back!"... do they? heck they dont!!! why not? i donno prolly coz i'm a low profile individual who is not worthy of having their problems attended to??? an anyways the problem fixes itself in a day or two anyways.. wat does an individual lose right???!!!

frankly i'm fed up of this.. this is what happened at office too... altho i must say they were quicker to attend to the office problems.... they would i guess coz office was paying them over 7000 rufiya a month and me the unimportant individual is payin only 650 per month for a measly 64k line.. ( not even close to that )

well office changed over to dhiraagu and we've never been happier... i prolly should do too... the ADSL starter might be enuf as a subsitute and prolly enuf bandwith too... seeing that i dont get to download from this connection anyways!!!

seriously if anyone from focus infocom reads this i suggest u put this issue to your customer services dept.. or watever dept it should go to...

if u don't provide proper services to the individual.. you are gonna lose out... in the end they are also making decisions for companies and your other big clients...

:@ :@ :@ i don't like being offline!!!

Comming Up!!! Wataniya Mobile Tested

2005-08-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Comming over this weekend.. wataniya mobile services being tested and compared against dhiraagu's.....

from gettin my number to well... :) come back an see

PhotoSquid

2005-08-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

Jus thought i would start up a PhotoBlog.... nothin too fancy... jus a few photos i've taken an am takin over the years...

anyways the addy is http://photosquid.blogspot.com

enjoy

ahem ahem!

2005-08-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

theres nothing unusual when poeple try to please their boss or their seniors.. same applies for wataniya. The have started handing out free numbers to TOP government officials in Maldives. They are given the same number which they use from Dhiraagu and the juicy part is that its all for free!!! no need to pay the bil.. make all the calls you can... be on an international call for a month and you still need not pay the bill... not bad eh? wish the public got offers like that?

WOW show by wataniya!!!

2005-08-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

While squid here was sitting at home watching the telly, me and azim were down where all the action was... here's wat we thought of the show in a nutshell,

the first act was alrite with unoosha singing an all.... kinda set the pace for the show..

then nikil came up an he was... well... not too bad.. but not wat was expecting i guess..

the laser show was not exactly spectacular as squid said... but its a lot better when u see it for real than seeing it on TV... so i have to say it was kinda good.. but i saw no point in repeating the same show twice...

but i must say... i wasnt at all impressed with the dances by theater mirage... maybe i dont have the "artistic" taste to properly grasp the concept.. but... still i dint like it...

sultans were a disappointment too... i mean its nothing wrong with the music... jus was a mood killer..... plus what was that abt "dhivehi rahyithunah genesdhey lava" and performing 'get up, stand up' ... doh!!! please do u have to bring that in.....

mezzo... hmm mezzo was alrite i think... i donno cant say too much coz i found myself having a coffee before the show was over....

i do have one question tho.. where is all the fireworks that was mentioned on the leaflets an the posters an the billboards?.... did someone forget? or was it jus a few crackers... or stink bombs maybe?

all in all.. the show was a good move by wataniya.. in terms of marketing... but the show itself was jus.... Mediocre.. nothing you'd wanna talk about in a few weeks time...

above: the stage not a bad setup actually

Above: the laser Show

Above and below: the Crowds... quite a lot actually

Dhiraagu Sponsors Wataniya "WoW" show on TV!

2005-08-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

I was just sitting in my room watching the "WOW" show by Wataniya and suddenly there was this small commercial break and what do i see!!! a Sponsored by Dhiraagu advertisement... how could it be.. well its not that hard to understand the whole situation...

The "WOW" show was being telecasted live on TVM on a programme called "Navaranna" and the programme was sponsored by Dhiraagu...but the thought of Dhiraagu sponsoring the Wataniya event was fun.. hehe

anyway, for those of you enjoying the show, please enjoy it.. i watched the show for sometime.. nothign interesting for me... the laser show was.. eerm.. well NORMAL is all i can say.. the music played is stupid and totally absurd and yeah last but not least, the one and only Nikhil... yeah whats so special abt him... he was good with the audience but he kept fantasizing Pamela Anderson for abt 5 mins and the word "boobs" just would not come out of his mouth no matter how hard he tried.. so enjoy.. im off to bed!

Entertainment Guide and telcos!!!

2005-08-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

one of the most popular advertising medium these days in maldives is the entertainment guide... the cable guide for maldives.... which is of coz due to the fact almost every home in male will have a copy an will keep the same copy for a month at least without throwing it out... works better than inserts in newspapers.... and ads in them as well... ppl refer to it often so expousre in increased......

anyways... im not here to talk abt the EG.... but i refer to the august edition of Entertainment guide weekely to highlight somethin really interesting.... now the way advertising in the EG works is that u can book ur page or place for advertisments for months in advance.... and well dhiraagu has appearantly done so on the front cover flap...which is one of the most effective advertising areas as well its seen by all... even when u dont open it...

now wats so intersting abt all this.... well since dhiraagu has (probably) booked the front cover flap for the next eternity it wouldnt be easy to get that spot now would it? good move by dhiraagu...

enter wataniya... well they cant book the front cover now can they?... wat do they do...? hehe this is where it gets hilarious... they make a over for the whole bloody guide... like a slide in envelope... an presto... dissaprears dhiraagu and they have the whole bloody cover area... front an back..... brilliant!!! refer to pics below....!!! dirty.. yes.. but nonetheless brilliant move..... its not like dhiraagu plays nice either ( i refer to the image change which is still fresh in memory )....

well true.. the cover envelope might be thrown away.. but i guess wataniya is making a point here... which is?... i havent a clue hehe...

Same Perspective on Dhiraagu Logo [a tribute]

2005-08-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have come across some more articles regarding the new dhiraagu logo which i thought i would just add up here ....

INN's Blog

http://www.leptone.com/blogs/inn/archives/2005/06/dhiraagu.html

RXS Blog
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=14200297&postID=112227084487486947

Stick with Dhiraagu

2005-08-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

With Wataniyya starting their work and Dhiraagu reducing their prices to an all time low, there has been great hype on who is better?should i shift to wataniyya or not.. well im a Dhiraagu post paid user and i do not plan to switch to wataniyya YET! (unless there is no other way i would, but highly unlikely :)

First of all, the problem with dhiraagu currently is not the price, to be honest dhiraagu prices are much lower than wataniyyaa .The problem is that their servers are gettign congusted and they cant accomodate the increasing number of customers without a downfall in their service... yeah at times i myself run into the problems of all circuits are being used...

but here is the juicy part and the reason which i would not be shifting to wattaniyyaa( and still i stress on "YET"!)

lets assume that in the next 6 months time, 20% of the mobile phone users of maldives would be shifting to wataniyya.
Statistics at the end of 2004 show that there are 113,246 mobile phone users in Maldives, of which 16,374 are post paid and 96,872 are pre paid.
( http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=39 )

so when the 20% of the poeple shift to wataniyya, what happens to dhiraagu? simple, the 80% of the remaining customers will be able to get better services. there is no more congustion and no more "allcircuits are busy" .. as wataniyya says "you can get through the first time" ...

ok, wataniyyaa may provide G3 in male' , they may provide conferencing as a free service and also provide PTT , but do u think dhiraagu is gonna just sit their and just wait .. i believe anyone who knows dhiraagu would know that thats the LAST thing dhiraagu would do :) they are cannibals, all these yrs they fed on the flesh of us, but i believe they have competition now so they would be feeding on wataniyya or anyone else who comes in their way from now on.. so we r free and we will get better service ..

Switching Frenzy?

2005-07-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

I just dropped by wataniya today to check wat it was all abt... man.. couldnt believe my eyes... is everyone genuinely trying to switch? or is it the general Maldivian tendency to kulhibelun...

well so much for me being able to check out wataniya's service today..... its hard to even get into the place.... personally i think they should have opened up temporary outlets.. Kiosks or watever.... to handle the demand...

hmmm reminds me.. wat was that abt someone not being able to watch TVM on their wataniya mobile?.. heh... personally i would prefer MTV or VH1....

but wouldnt be that hard now would it? wataniya has a 3G network in the male' region.. dosent seem that far fetched to stream media... they certianly should have the required bandwidth capacity to do so... i've seen it done elsewhere...

nywyas... hmmm oh the crowds..

One of wataniya's ads... simply put..
"get through the first time"....

finally does this mean that we'll not have to listen to that dumb message from dhiraagu?...remains to be seen...

It has Begun!!!

2005-07-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the day is finally here.... wataniya has come into the picture... dhiraagu is... well playing the dirtiest game as well as it can.. heh... granted when i say that the response from dhiraagu would prolly be that its all marketing.. image change, and blah blah yadda yadda... sure the price reductions are a welcome one... but the timing... god knows how many time dhiraagu dropped prices within july itself....

now when i say that its not coz i dont mind the reduction in prices.... its all good for the final customer.. but it does seem a bit unfair to the competition.. this time wataniya.. i mean in all fairness they should be given the opportunity to settle down... and show the public what they have.... isnt that what happened when focus infocom came in with the internet?

sure.. the argument there being forcus inforcom is a Maldivian company and wataniya is not an so therefore dhiraagu shouldn’t stay an let them settle down... well BULL to that... dhiraagu has been having the chance to do whatever they wanted for over 2o something years.... whatever happened to reducing prices?

if someone looked around... im pretty sure there has been more price reductions in the mobile tariffs since wataniya was given the contract to be the second mobile provider... and more so over the past few months.. in terms of service and prices.... which is also a good thing.... but the important point is this...

I haven’t forgotten how dhiraagu has been charging ( exploiting ) the public over the years... an i'll be darned if i forget that jus coz dhiraagu reduces the prices by a few laari; what they have been doing over the years...

having said that... i do hope wataniya is able to play upto the expectations of the people who switch... this remains to be seen... but i'm def in the group who wants to give them the chance to prove themselves...

i've also had enuf of dhiraagu tellin me, that the number i called is either not in range, or all their circuits are busy, or its switched off, or that the number must have been eaten up by the loch ness monster... seriously.. they really dont have a clue what happens to their numbers do they?

anyways... i love one of the new wataniya ads... " get thru the first time " ... lets see if they live up to this...

I'm switching tomorow... time to start sharing... ;)

Dhiraagu set to reduce prices again?

2005-07-14T02:29:00.000-07:00

Wow... this is interesting... i jus found out that dhiraagu is now set to reduces its mobile prices again.....

wataniya just annouced today their packages and pricing.. i havent been able to get a hold of a list yet... but as soon as i get them... hmmm

anyways.. the following are supposedly the dhiraagu's new pricing structure...

also the connection for dhiraagu has already been reduced from 500 to 199....

i also heard that the SMS rate is going to be reduced to 20 laari as well.. but thats jus for dhiraagu to dhiraagu mobiles... remains to be seen...

anyways... thought this might be interesting... wonder when these rates will become effective???

Update details available at: http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=21

IS THE BIGGEST COMMUNICATION GIANT IN MALDIVES A VICTIM OF MISCOMMUNICATION?

2005-07-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

-Contributor Article Received by email-

By: Udjat

Communication simply means that the sender sends a message which is received by the receiver correctly and the receiver understands the information exactly the same as the sender has send.

For a company like Dhiraagu they should have and must be familiar with this basic of communitcation. The latest step they have taken has proved to my understanding that they have not received the message their customers wanted all these years.

I don’t have any statistics to prove that there are more customers wanting to change their logo and image then customers who want to reduce the price of their services. If this is true then surely Dhiraagu has been a victim of miscommunication.

Over the television and radio I heard that the main purpose of this change is to update to be more modernised. This is the same reason why they have changed their logo. I may be wrong and I truly agree different people have different perception about the logo. In my view the logo has taken a step backward and not a step forward. Logically thinking when civilisation started people used their hands to do work. As they become more civilised they started using tools. The previous logo shows a tool used for communication but now it’s just the hand. Like I said before my view may be different from others and mine is just an opinion. This time I must admit I am a victim of miscommunication.

I must give credit to their marketing effort carried by them to compete against their ONLY competitor even before they started their operations. The main aim of the huge marketing campaign was to change their image for better. In my view their whole campaign back fired on them. The reaction of the whole people was that all their efforts were “a desperate measure” to survive because Wataniyyaa is going to take over their market. The whole campaign proved how insecure Dhiraagu is; and how few “loyal customers” they have. Wataniyyaa’s marketing team should be grateful to Dhiraagu for providing them free publicity. I just wonder whether Dhiraagu has a marketing team who do brainstorming or even the marketing department is monopolised by one person. Surely, a company would have thought the pros and cons of such a campaign.

Sometimes I wonder whether it is a message to the new competitor “STOP! THIS IS AS FAR AS YOU WOULD GO”. Whatever it is they should welcome new competition. This would show us – the public, how good they really are. A healthy competition is good for everyone and I know there are much more academically qualified people then just me. I just hope they don’t follow the Adam Smith’s theory in competing; which fighting for the first place but instead follow John Nash’s theory of equilibrium and use their competitive edge more evenly so that it is beneficial to all of us.

Back to the logo and it makes me wonder what it’s all about? It must be something really big with a deep meaning because it took two years to come up with that. What is it about the colour red? Maybe they think we are Spanish Bulls who will run after bright red. Here again they have been a victim of miscommunication because this is not Spain and we are NOT BULLS.

-Contributor Article Received by email-

Thoughts on the proposed submarine cables!

2005-07-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

( larger image available at http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/alcatel_large.gif)

Last week dhiraagu announced that they were going to lay an international submarine cable.. And following suit Wataniya and Focus Infocom to lay another cable..

Well I’d have to say about time!!! I can’t even begin to imagine how much easier life would be for people like us if these two projects are successful... and by being successful I mean the benefits of this being available for consumers like us at a reasonable price... of coz..
This might finally mean availability of services that we have been dreaming of.... more importantly the usability of services that we have been dreaming of...

True we say we have "broadband" internet service available at the moment... sure .. there are packages which state 256kbps all the way upto 1Mbps too..... but anyone who has been using them knows that we hardly ever get the speed stated... sure we might get this speed up to the ISP servers... maybe close to that when accessing local servers.... but almost never to international traffic... mainly cos the INTERNATIONAL bandwidth is shared.... and sometimes shared so much that the speed stated becomes insignificant...

take the dhiraagu "baraboa" package for example.. The ADSL home user package that they have been marketing as 256/64 kbps... the contention on that package according to TAM (http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=21) is 1:200.... now wat does this 1:200 figure have to do with speed...???

well my understanding of contention leads me to believe that this 1:200 means that the stated 256Kbps is allocated for around 200 users. and increased in the same ratio... so this could mean that at any given time your so called 256kbps connected is shared among 199 other 256kbps connections... which is of coz.. very misleading to an average consumer....pls correct me if im wrong....

Focus Infocom also probably has a similar level of connection sharing but I don’t have any figures for them....

Anyways... what's gonna happen when these two cables are in operation?.... well I haven’t a clue abt whats gonna happen.. but I have my opinions on what should happen....

As dhiraagu has been so kind to point out in their press release Maldives is gonna have "unlimited capacity".. which I doubt.. but yes.. a heck of a lot more... capacity in terms of carrying data in and out of the country... double that with two cables and this could actually mean we are going to be able to have true broadband...

Now.. with satellite transmission of data.. the inevitable lag... or latency has been a major issue... satellites are a lot slower than the submarine cables for transmitting and receiving data so it is SLOW... this lag issue has prevented a lot of value added services from being properly deployed in the country... the most important service for me is VOIP... ability to play games online.... etc.. did i forget to mention that satellite traffic is wayyyyyyyy costly compared to traffic on cable?.... hmm well it is.. so.. are we gonna get a lower price to reflect that?

now VOIP means "Voice over IP".. which is ( in internet context ) jus another fancy way of saying that your voice is sent over the internet.... anyways.. its just equivalent to talking over the internet... sure we can talk over the internet now.. using MSN messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc....but most of us would have experienced this delay... most of the time seems like we're talking on a walkie talkie.... and even then there are cracks in the voice transmission... which makes it bothersome and even frustrating to talk over the internet...

with the latency issues gone... and with increased capacity.. we might be able to make proper use of VOIP... this would prove to be extremely useful for businesses and homes who has to make overseas calls on a regular basis.... if u have a good internet connection u could cut off your phone bill drastically by using VOIP services.... coz then you wouldn’t have to use your Telco to make phones over the traditional phone network...

if u are calling someone lets say in the UK... and both of you has internet.. the cost of making a call from your computer to computer would be.. nothing extra.... the cost of internet is all ud be paying... there are really good computer to computer VOIP services available... including Skype..which is one of my personal favorites... the sound quality is awesome... you could also make calls from your compute to someone else’s regular telephone using the internet for darn cheap prices.... like around less than MRF 1 a min for the USA and many other countries... compare that to the price we have to pay now...

anyways enough about VOIP.... even general surfing....and video conferencing its almost impossible to watch a good streaming video at 300kbps without it dropping frames even on a 512kbps connection in Male'... aah how I long for a day when I can watch the music videos at yahoo launch without dropping frames....

Now I’m not too sure why they decided to lay two different cables, one good cable would have provided enough bandwidth to cover the total existing bandwidth of Maldives a few hundred times over... but I’m not complaining... two is always better than one... specially if these two cables are connected to two different backbones.. and they play nice and share the combined bandwidth... or is that asking for too much :)

so.. all in all... im very excited abt this submarine cable proposal.... I jus hope we get to enjoy the benefits..

Adobe Creative Suite 2 .. "CS2"

2005-07-07T02:20:00.000-07:00

Theres not much hype abt the new creative suite 2 as it was for the CS1... to be frank as a designermyslef, i dont see much different for a normal photoshop user, but in a more serious photoshop users point of view, there are some pretty good additions. here i will be just mentioning the basic new stuff on CS2...

* a sample word next to the font name in that font is a good change. lets the user know how the font really looks like and saves a bit of time.

* multiple layers can be selected in layers palette by just using Cntrl button or Shift button and right clicking as we do normally in windows.

*The file browser which was first inreoduced in Photoshop 7 and improved in CS1 is now called " Adobe Bridge" in CS2. The good thing abt this is that the files can be accessed via other Creative Suite applications as well. Also bridge can be run as a standalone application.

* improvement in the version cue, which is pretty helpful when working on larger projects expecially as a team .this is integrated with Adobe Bridge.

well these are just the basic stuff which i came across the new version, but i believe there are a lot of new features in CS2 for digital photographers and maybe i will just try have a look at them later and do a little summary!.. CS2 havent really had my attention that much , i still prefer to use CS and i did use version 7 till very recently..

The last confrontation!

2005-07-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

2 days back i had the chance to discuss the new "dhiraagu" logo with a senior dhiraagu official and im very happy he tried to explain the concept behind the new design which we all believe is "sumeh"!! here i will highlight the mail points which i am able to remember, and the wordings does not resemble the same words used by him.. heh *In the previous logo ,2 days back i had the chance to discuss the new "dhiraagu" logo with a senior dhiraagu official and im very happy he tried to explain the concept behind the new design which we all believe is "sumeh"!! here i will highlight the mail points which i am able to remember, and the wordings does not resemble the same words used by him.. heh *In the previous logo , the BLUE globe was supposed to be representing cable & wireless, while the RED "sangu" represented the maldives. *Now, since maldives has got a much bigger share than C&W, it was about time the logo represented the maldives more than the C&W. * In the modern days, the hand seems to be the most important communicating medium, more than the voice even.. sms, chatting etc.... so the new hand resembles that! * The red color as i stated before, represents the maldives.. and NOT any conspiracy theory to steal the color of Wataniyya or anyplace else. * The most imprtant point is, yes we are talking so much abt the new dhiraagu logo right? but to be honest they are the ones who are profitting from it, coz the more we talk abt the "ugly" new logo, the more "dhiraagu" is gonna come up in our conversation and that is some new marketting strategy i guess!hehe.... .. and it might go to a limit where we will be reminded of dhiraagu whenever we see our own hands :)

Change and Dhiraagu!!!

2005-06-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

What is all this about change?? here are some thoughts!!!

Change is constant!
- > Constant because people will be constantly switching to Wataniya?

Change is Permanent!
- > Coz once people switch to Wataniya they won't come back?

Change is all around us!
- > Coz wataniya is coming? and dhiraagu is feeling the fear?

Change is for a reason!
- > at the risk of repeating myself! COZ WATANIYA IS COMING?

CHAETODON what?

2005-06-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

This was a picture taken recently by my friend Shafraz Naeem a.k.a "doc", on a night dive to a dive spot in Male' atoll( spot cannot be identified due to political reasons :p ).. anyway! i showed him this fish but since it looks like just another ordinary butterflyfish, he did not take more snaps of it.. (so listen to me more next time doc)...

The reason for putting this pic here is coz i cant seem to identify this fish. i have tried lookign at numerous fish books, websites and have asked a number of fish experts in Maldives and none of them was able to say this IS something, so after all the discussions most experts are telling me that this COULD BE a hybrid or an alien species of the CHAETODONTIDAE family(butterflyfishes). now thats interesting!!

the significant difference with all the other butterflyfishes in the yellow brush line on the side of the fish. Most of them in the other species in the family which looks liek this have a black brush line. But it maybe the coloration change is maybe because it is night , and there are slight color variations for butterflyfishes during night. so it might be or might not be a color change as well..

Yes it does look very much like a couple of common butterflyfishes in maldives and before anyof you say that this fish looks like a certain other fish, i would liek to state the differences i have come across.

chaetodon oxycyphephalus( Pig face butterflyfish) :: This has a broken black bar while in the X species the black bar is not broken.
chaetodon lineolatus( lined butterflyfish) :: this has a black back ad the lines althought they run parallel, looks more like root lines! white in X species the lines are straight and no black back..

So those are the 2 which looks mostly like the X species. so if anyone have any idear of what this might be please dont resitate to contact or leave a comment here

Oodles of Money!!!

2005-06-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

so there i was.. sitting bored... thinkin "where does dhiraagu get the money for a such a huge campaign to change it's logo ( a crappy logo at that )?" well so i decided to find out.... now here i am half an hour later going... "wow.... my question has been answered...!!! "

there are a few facts that i would like to run through...

Fact 1:
Source: Cable and Wireless 2004-2005 Annual Report
http://www.investis.com/reports/cw_ar_2005_en/report.php?page=76&type=0&zoom=1
Page: 74/75

ok lets run through this: this is part of the page mentioned above, not the text circled in red. ( well could be maroon, dhiraagu insists that dhiraagu is red and wataniya is maroon which makes all the difference... yeah right!!! --dark red bright red-- looks similar to me)

anyways...points to note here: ( year ended 31 March 2005)

Total Turnover: 167 Million pounds ( of which 60 Percent is from Maldives and Guernsey...according to the report.)
Total Profit : 93 Million pounds

There are 2 ASSUMPTIONS i make here.
1- the 60% trends holds true for expenses and therefore the profits as well.
2- Guernsey and Maldives will have an equal split of the 60%.

Note to self abt Guernsey:
This 2nd assumption is a bit far fetched as Guernsey has a population of 65000+ (2005 estimate according to CIA world factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gk.html) and as any maldivian would know maldives has 300000+ population.( the 2000 census says its 270000+ http://www.planning.gov.mv/yrb2004/yrb04/Yearbook/3.Population/3.1.htm ) so accounting for the 5 year gap.

i for one think the revenues would be based on the potential market ie: the population. but thats just me.. so i definelty think its a fair assumption that maldives at least accounts for half the turnover.

Calculations

If total profit for the rest of the world is 93 million pounds, then based on the 1st assumption. 60% of the profit would be attributable to Maldives and Guernsey.

= 93,000,000 x 0.6 = 55,800,000 Pounds profit from Maldives and Guernsey.

now 2nd Assumption that equal split between the two areas.

55,800,000 / 2 = 27,900,000 pounds for each ( so Maldives )

hmmmm 27.9 Million profit from Maldives? how much does that translate into?

exchange rate as of today : ruffiya 23.4771 to the pound (http://www.mma.gov.mv/er.php)

27,900,000 x 23.4771 = MRF 665,011,090.00 ( did i get that right?)

Wow.. lemme put that into words: Six hundred and Sixy five Million, Eleven thousand and nintey rifiyaa....PROFIT???

WOAH.. thats a lot? how much does that mean in a day?

665,011,090.00 / 365 = MRF 1,794,550.931 per DAY!!

NOW THATS SOMETHING!! 1.7 million PROFIT.. per day.. not sales, not turnover, not revenue.. jus PROFIT?

Okey.. by those calculations and assumption i figure dhiraagu makes a SHITLOAD of money..hmmm lets try another figure...

Fact 2:

Source: Ministry of Planning, Yearbook 2004
( web address: http://www.planning.gov.mv/yrb2004/yrb04/Yearbook/13.Public%20Finance/13.3.htm )

Above you can see an extract from the website address which lists the government revenues the circled one is dhiraagus Budget Est. contribution for 2004 as per the website. figure in millions of Rf.

The Govt. Holds a 55% share in dhiraagu while CW owns remaing 45% - *

now assuming govt gets that 161.9 Mil as dividend.. the total declared dividend should be as follows:

161.9 / 55 x 100 = 294.36 Million Rf.

now mind you this is only the decalred dividend. this does not account for retained earnings of the company which like any reasonable company would not declare the whole profit. and would retain a resonable level.

the question of the amount retained is a mystery. but lets assume.. a modest 20% retention before dividend is declared.

so.. on that assumption profit before retained earnings is deduted should be,

294.36 x 100 /80 = 367.95 Million Ruffiya.... PROFIT

how much does that translate to in a day?

367,950,000.00 / 365 = 1,008,082.19 Million

so.. dhiraagu makes 1 million+ profit per day... reasonable estimate!

Conclusion
sooo according to my calculation.. dhiraagu makes from anywhere around 1 - 1.7 million rufiya profit per day... no wonder they can afford to do anythin they want to... heck.. if they wanted to they prolly could change to pink tomorrow and wouldnt flinch... jus hope they pass down some of that profit to us the customers.

Disclaimers
This article and opinions included in it are highly judgmental and not intended to be believed as seen. My conclusions are mine and mine alone and in all probablilty could be the furthest from the truth. The references i have made are genuine and verifiable, and publicly available! any assumption i have made as i feel fit and could be taken differently. Calculations may have errors, I encourage anyone reading this to come to their own conclusions. Do your own thinking draw you own conclusions.. thats why u have a brain :)

p.s -> i know there are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in this article... too lazy to correct them, been writing this an i need a break ..

* - Previously i have written that the govt owns 51% of Dhiraagu while CW owns 49%... thanks to a comment posted this has been corrected show that govt owns 55% while CW owns 45%.
my apologies for this error.

DHIRAAGU Says: Talk to the Hand

2005-06-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

well well, isnt this a surprise??? Dhiraagu finally says out loud what its been feeling all these years.

"We aint listing to you... - and now we're gonna go public and say it out loud !!! "

DHIRAAGU .. an act of desperation!

2005-06-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

Yes! i did wonder what the question mark was all abt all over male' ... and i did think it was Wataniyyaa... but infact it turned out to be the total opposite... which was pretty amazing and pretty silly as well.. in fact the silliest part for me was the stupid new logo which they are craving so much abt!

Its amazing when the best graphics designers from Maldives and Sri Lanka have been working on this logo for 2 yrs and come up with this.... it looks pathetic and as far as i know, no one whome i know say anything good abt the logo either..

And i wonder why suddenly change the color to red and white? could it be that maybe the new telecom company Wataniyyaa is gonna be starting pretty soon and their colors are red and white as well.. so maybe Dhiragu is just playing some silly game.. who knows! they have been playing this silly game for a long time...

Seriously!! what does this logo mean... ive been tryign to figure it out for the past 2 days and let me try to tell you what i feel..

ok for a start the palm.... its supposed to be a D which stands for Dhiraagu...
the fingers.. hmmm!! just showing an open hand i guess!!
ok so togethere there seems to be some kind of a meaning of opening their arms towards the customers... but with the awkward asymmetrical graphic it does look like some kind of logo infront of a store at a theme park or at a childrens festival.

Also with the text written in a hand written font, it does loose the professional look as i see it.
dont you think? the precious logo with the "sangu" and "globe" realy suited well, but this... crazy!

honestly !i dont mind this logo or any logo which they have, but i want the services to be more cost effective.. As Mr.Waheed, Dhiraagu CEO said on the logo launching ceremony with regard to what customers were saying.....“We have been listening to our customers and they are telling us a number of things, ‘We like Dhiraagu, you are familiar to us and generally provide good service and value, however, your image doesn’t fit well with some of the new products and services coming to market’”

thats great! thank dhiragu for listening to their customers,, but i believe the customers would want to get services at more affordable rates rather than wanting dhiraagu to have a new logo... so lets get the preferences right first....