Qubee to expand its network

Firoz Ahmed

Qubee, the WiMax service provider in the country recently ran a campaign of network upgradation in Dhaka.
Feroz Ahmed, chief commercial officer of Qubee in an interview said the campaign has been a success for the Qubee.
"We got better response than our expectation," he said.
"We upgraded the network in Dhaka because there was demand for it," he said adding, "We felt the need for a better network to serve the current and potential demand in the market."
He said some the customers of Qubee had left for lack of good experience.
Through this campaign Qubee also wanted to get back those customers.
"We planned to revive around 5,000 customers and we are going to cross this number."
Ahmed said because of large number of users, their network was getting congested in some parts of Dhaka that include Gulshan, Banani, Dhanmondi, Mirpur, Uttara, Mohammadpur.
"Our network could not handle the demand. So, to provide quality service, we needed to increase the network capacity."
He said this upgradation has increased the network capacity by 50 per cent.
When asked about Qubee's plan, he said "Our short-term plan is to expand our network to divisional headquarters and important district towns by the end of this year."
At the moment Qubee has its network in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. Besides these, it has network in Pabna, Bogra, Comilla and Feni on trial basis.
"It has become commercially important for us to cover Narayanganj, Gazipur and Savar. We will cover these areas immediately," he said.
"By the year-end we will have a pretty decent coverage across the country."
He also said that Qubee has started a new campaign from May 1.
"In this campaign we are providing some incentive to the users who will join Qubee. Under this campaign if anybody joins Qubee, he or she will get Tk 500 discount on monthly tariff for two months and for next two months the user will get double volume.
"We are encouraging people to join Qubee by either cheaper price or more volume at the same price."
Ahmed said this offer would be valid for one month. However, he said, they might extend the offer by another month.
He also informed about a change in Qubee's sales model.
Qubee in previous sales model used to sell out the modem to users. Now they are not selling the modem instead Qubee is just taking a connection charge while setting up the connection.
"And under this sales model we are providing three-year replacement warranty for the modem. In previous model we would give just 6-month warranty."
Explaining this model he said a modem costs Tk 6,000 (Tk 4000 for modem and Tk 2000 for connectivity). "We had to give subsidy in previous sales model. Just to create a win-win situation we took this sales model."
Ahmed said Qubee started the business with a vision to bring high quality internet service in the country.
"We think we are yet to be there but our vision is very much there. We are on the track and we are making progress. Hopefully we will be there soon and will be able to take high quality internet where it has demand."