Here's the PTCL's most recent broadband Pakistan advertisement in the newspapers. Now to critically review this advertisement we have to look a little back, PTCL recently increased its DSL speeds except the 1M package users. So here is how it works now:

1M NOW 1M / 0% increase.

2M NOW 4M / 100% increase.

4M NOW 6M / 50% increase.

So the package with most value is 4M (old 2M) for Rs. 2000 per month. Now what's the most exciting thing about this advertisement? statistically there would be a lot more 1M DSL internet package users than 4M/6M users combined. Since most of the market for potential profit lies in main stream users (which in this case is 1M users), PTCL really want them to switch over to 4M by paying extra Rs. 800 per month(Rs. 1200+ Rs. 800 = Rs. 2000).

Its is really cheap of PTCL of not increasing speed for its most of the users (with 1M package). They only increased the speeds for the fraction of their DSL users. Its definitely a huge marketing tactic that they increased speeds for the same cost but actually they increased for almost 10-15 people out of 100.

Let us not forget that we still pay a huge amount for DSL subscription as compared to the tariffs world wide. Even 1M user pays a good price for the poor services he get. Its PTCL plan to convert most of the 1M users to 4M, those who are currently using 4M package are clear winners, they got 100% increase for the same money. PTCL will eventually dump the 1M package like 256K package in the past, and 2M will be minimum standard for the DSL users. The ultimate winners will be one's with 1M package and those who stick to it until PTCL push them to 2M themselves. Which will happen sooner than later, maybe by May 2011 because the market gap between 1M and 4M is huge, if PTCL don't target those users, by the the time PTCL realize this fact some other ISP will target them.