Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) recently announced the discontinuation of its Charji dongle services, in over 25 cities across Pakistan. The Charji dongle has now been replaced with Ufone’s 4G Blaze device.
PTCL has now shared official comments on why it is ending its Charji services. This discontinuation comes as PTCL’s 20-year Wireless Local Loop (WLL) license to run Charji-like devices comes to an end. This license was issued to PTCL by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in 2004, but it has now expired as WLL technology is now deemed outdated.
PTCL is now marketing Ufone’s 4G Blaze network as a replacement for Charji with faster speeds, greater reliability, and a wider range of benefits.
A spokesperson for PTCL Group said:
We are committed to providing our customers with the best possible telecom experience. The transition to Ufone 4G Blaze technology is a significant step forward in achieving this goal, and we are confident that our customers will appreciate the enhanced services and features offered by this cutting-edge technology.
It is worth mentioning that customers in Azad Jammu and Kashmir will continue to enjoy uninterrupted Charji services, while those interested in availing the discount offer can visit their nearest joint shop with their Charji device to upgrade to the new Ufone Blaze device.
As a reminder, the Ufone Blaze 4G device is currently being offered at a 50% discount as compensation. The price has been dropped from Rs. 5,500 to Rs. 2,750. It is unclear how long the offer will last.
It seems more of a move to consolidate its wireless operations and optimizing costs. I wonder what technical difficult there would have been to simply migrate the existing CharGi Subscribers to Ufone infrastructure. Jazz and Warid did that successfully.
I would not think that many subscribers would make this move, It could have been handled much better with PTCL unblock the WiFi devices to allow ufone signal as well and just change the SIM card free of cost.
PTCL group chose the most easy way and put the cost on the subscribers which might not work well with the existing customers as blaze packages are more expensive than the existing chargi packages. Customers stuck to Chargi not because of its service but because of its low running cost of the package. The service was already patchy with indoor signals issues which are common with ufone as well who has the least bandwidth available to all opcos.
So without a free upgrade, I think many customers will choose the better one who serves there area with more stable signals.
Migration wouldn’t have been that easy. Jazz and Warid’s merger was far simpler as they were already using the same frequency bands, so it was just a matter of integration and merging from backend. In most cases a SIM replacement wasn’t even required.
CharJi to Ufone is different. Ufone is using Band 3 FDD-LTE for 4G across Pakistan, CharJi was using TDD-LTE, and so the MBB device itself was completely different and wouldn’t have been compatible with Ufone’s network.
As for not making the move, I was surprised myself, there were several people in line at my nearby PTCL exchange / Ufone shop yesterday getting their CharJi boxes replaced with the ‘Ufone Blaze 4G’ MBB device.