Mobitel MTunes - An Expensive Way to Entertain Your Callers

Becoming the fourth and last to introduce similar service in Sri Lanka, Mobitel launched their ringin tone service under the brand name of Mobitel M Tunes. Dialog was the first to introduce "RingIn Tones" to Sri Lankan mobile users and later it was followed by Hutch under "Hello Tunes" brand and Tigo under "Call-A-Tune". At present Dialog is the only provider which has enabled it's users to listen and select songs online.All other providers require their users to activate this service via an IVR. Tigo users have to dial *336 to activate and assign songs in Call-A-Tune where Hutch users need to dial 369 for Hello Tunes and Mobitel users 777.
Among these four networks it seems Mobitel is the most expensive due to several reasons. First thing is Mobitel charges RS 3 + VAT per minute to call 777.You can imagine how much will it cost to select a song from among 100s using a IVR.The other thing is there is a daily rental of Rs 5 +VAT for this M Tunes service which will end up in adding an overhead of about Rs 190 for your monthly mobile expenditure. In all other networks it costs about half of this amount.
These Value Added Services (VAS) should be a way of attracting users to the network inside this highly competitive mobile arena, not pick pocketing from customers.

Internet Cripple in Sri Lanka, India and Middle East

A breakdown in an international undersea cable network (SE-ME-WE) has badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. As a result most of the Sri Lankan internet users also experiencing a Internet slowdown since last Tuesday. India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage. "There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted Internet connectivity in India," Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an Internet service provider, said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable. India said it had lost more than half of its capacity. "There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters. He told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.

Sri Lanka Telecom, the largest Internet services provider in Sri Lanka maintain a direct undersea link between Sri Lanka and India which is highly utilized for Internet connectivity and voice. Therefore most of the SLT services have also been disrupted.
Some of the following incidents may take effect.

• Web pages may take more than 35 seconds to load.
• Distrutions in streams of even 64 kbps radio station from London.
• Failure of most IM protocols such as JabberLive and AIM fail (with random socket errors)
• Failure of HTTPS authentication servers(timeout).
• Dial-up speeds when accessing European servers.

It was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal.

[Source: IBN Live]

M Tunes from Mobitel

Sri Lanka’s second largest mobile network Mobitel recently introduced “MTunes” a ringin tone service for Mobitel customers. With M Tunes calling party will be able to listen to a music track while the caller hangs up the phone.

Mobitel users can dial 777 to activate M Tunes, add/modify songs and also to disconnect this service. There will be a charge of Rs 4.00 + taxes per minute for calling 777 and also Rs 5.00 + taxes per day for the M Tunes service.

However Mobitel is the final network which introduced this service in Sri Lanka.

SLT Mobitel Reduces Call Charges

Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel has reduced their tariff one again. Now Mobitel subscribers can experience the lowest outgoing rates within the same mobile network which is Rs.2/= per minute(Between 6.00 a.m to 6.00 p.m and 11.00p.m to 6.00am). SMS are just Rs 1/=(24 Hrs) and MMS 2/=(24Hrs).
SLT offers variety of pre paid and post paid packages and SMART5 is the most famous pre paid revolution among them.

SMART5 Call Charges

Outgoing : Rs. 5.00 (Any Network)
Rs. 2.00 (Between 11.00 p.m -6.00 a.m) (Any Network)

Incomming : 2 mins Free. Thereafter 5 per minute. Rs. 2.00 (Between 11.00 p.m -6.00 a.m)

The good thing is subscribers will get a 10% discount on all above charges and 20% discount after using a SMART5 connection for 2 years. Apart from above smart features subscribers can even activate “Any8” feature and “Total Incoming Free” feature for just Rs. 5/= per day. Total Incoming Free is good if you are a crazy listener. Any8 is similar to Dialog’s My5 but in Any8 you can add 8 numbers of any networks(even land lines). Outgoing will be Rs. 3/= and SMS will be 0.75 Cents. The other good thing is you can change these numbers 8 times a month without any extra cost.
You can activate these features by sending and sms saying “allincfree” to 7678. Then you can dial 141 and add your most frequently called numbers.