Qubee Pakistan Home Page
Qubee Coverage Google Maps Mashup
Qubee Speed Comparision Flash Tool
Qubee
for Augere
Qubee is a company on a mission to provide WiMAX broadband internet in emerging markets. The company is headed by Sanjiv Ahura, ex-CEO of Orange, and brings together the talents of some of the worlds leading professionals in the field.
Kilo75 was invited to join a multi-disciplinary team* (including Brand Consultants, Designers, Writers and Marketers) to provide advice on all things digital and produce public websites for initial launch in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Qubee project presented some interesting challenges...
Qubee are offering a service to people whose perception of the internet has been badly impacted by their experience of dial-up access. You may be old enough to remember pre-broadband days, but the dial-up experience in many emerging markets is many times worse than what we used to endure in the UK. The cable infrastructure in Pakistan for example can mean that a 56 Kbps modem may only actually provide data throughput in the order of 6-12 Kbps!
So, on one hand, developing the public internet presence for Qubee was a throwback to pre-broadband days, and we found ourselves engineering narrowband versions of each site to ensure that customers get the best possible experience of Qubee, no matter what their connection. On the other hand, the site includes content to illustrate the Broadband experience, content such as a speed comparison tool developed with Adobe Flash and a Google Maps Mashup displaying Network coverage (we developed scripts that processed data provided by the radio engineering team).
Work for Qubee also included the development of a Portal GUI, from which Pre-paid Customers can access the network or top up their balance. We also integrated the web sites with back-office systems including the Billing System and Lead Management System.
A second phase of the Qubee website project has been the rollout of a customised version of Drupal Content Management System to allow local marketing teams to manage their local web sites.
In the process of producing the Qubee website we've been lucky enough to work with a truly international team consisting of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, France and the UK.
* Qubee was a collaboration with our friends Mark Smith (of Mark Smith Design) and Sean Lewis at Brands Applied.