The Zong Mystery

In Pakistan as we all know that Zong is the brand name of a pre-paid mobile SIM offered by China Mobile Pakistan, a subsidiary of China Mobile that has already invested over $700 million in Pakistan to the launch of their cellular company in Pakistan.

Momekh a fellow blogger and a recent twitter acquaintance stumbled across a very interesting discovery. In his online adventure he stumbled across a blog being hosted on a sub-domain blog.zong.com which flouts itself to be”‘the first and only mobile payment system enabling Facebook application developers and Web Publishers to seamlessly bill 95% of the US and European wireless subscribers on their phone bill” billed to launch itself at the TechCrucnh50 party in the US.

At first glance this could very well be just another website with no links with the Pakistani compatriot Zong but if you were to go to their home page ie Zong.com the website ironically it forwards to the Pakistan Wikipedia page, how interesting but definitely mysterious

Credit Momekh


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18 responses to “The Zong Mystery”

  1. Waqas Avatar

    The Official Website of Zong is Zong.com.pk not Zong.com

    Secondly Zong.com website is opening fine outside Pakistan may be they have some Geo redirect to Wikipedia for visitors of Pakistan

  2. Asad Avatar
    Asad

    Tell this to Mr. Zahid Jamil a Pakistani Domain Hijacker of DNDRC he may give zong.com.pk to zong.com or vice versa

  3. Teeth Maestro Avatar

    Waqas I agree with you – Zong’s official website is zong.com.pk but what was interesting was to see the Zong.com a totally unrealted Pakistan website forwarding to Pakistan wikipedia while the blog url goes to the companies own site

    Geo forwarding – a very interesting observation

  4. Abdullah Avatar
    Abdullah

    Zong.com goes to the companies website here in Canada. So that redirection to Wiki might only be for Pakistani visitors.

  5. ReallyVirtual Avatar

    Funny this Teeth post appeared right besides the zong post from Techcrunch in my reader.

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/zong-lets-you-bill-web-apps-to-your-phone/

    I just sshed to a US server and verified that it goes to the techcrunch version of zong. If you remember the recent youtube hijacking fiasco, there is a very strong probability that the problem is at our (Pakistani) end – perhaps Zong realized a bit too late that the .com for their brandname is gone (though it was registered 9 years ago), but decided to intervene with the local routing system to redirect it for paki visitors? (just a conjecture, I’m not a networking expert)

  6. FizDosani Avatar

    nice found!
    here i got the address of person who register zong.com.

    Registrant Contact:
    Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
    Whois Agent

    PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1
    C/O ZONG.COM
    Bellevue, WA 98007
    US

  7. imran Avatar

    nice find man… but ironically it is not directing to some website with google ads so that means the owner is not making any money outta that… he might hit strike a good deal with zong.com.pk to me this domain worths more than $100k

  8. Life123 Avatar
    Life123

    from pak if we try to open zong.com it redirects to Pakistan wikipedia, agreed. I went ahead a wikipedia their (zong) parent company which is China Mobile Company Limited. URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mobile
    I was astonished to read through that….
    ZoNG allows people to communicate at will without worrying about tariffs, network coverage, capacity issues or congestion (Pakistan only). After reading all I got the impression that zong is a dedicated brand name of a service only for Pakistani China Mobile customers. In fact the links under Zong points out to zong.com.pk and NOT zong.com, Some thing is not right , I guess China Mobile Company does not want its Pakistani customers to know about Other cool services providing by the parent company under zong.com , after all its the biggest moblie telecom company in the world. The redirection of zong.com should have been zong.com.pk not wikipedia Pakistan.
    Another interesting thing!!
    if you wikipedia zong ,,, it also tells us “ZONG is the first International brand of China Mobile being launched in Pakistan. [1] The company is often cited as China Mobile (Pakistan)”.
    So i think zong.com should not even exist.

  9. PakMan Avatar

    whenever a new brand enters Pakistan lots of guys try to get the domain name. there is one zong.pk aswell. Same is the case with ufone urls….

  10. jaaf Avatar
    jaaf

    Here's some thing interesting

    here's the result, when someone visit this site from outside Pakistan or via proxy within Pakistan

    http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zongpl3….

    I don't know why but they have Geo redirect to Wikipedia for visitors of Pakistan

  11. Waqas Avatar

    According to my finding ZONG.com does not open in Pakistan it redirects to Wikipedia Pakistan article by PTA order on request of ZONG Mobile.

  12. Faried Nawaz Avatar

    FizDosani, that’s not zong.com’s owner. That’s the registrar; they offer a “whois protection service” so you can’t really tell who owns the domain using whois.

    I sure hope the redirect isn’t due to some PTA order. I’d hate to go back to using a proxy in the States all the time to get around this madness.

  13. Babar Avatar

    The redirect is only for PK internet users and China Mobile is likely to have something to do with it 🙂

  14. Sohaib Athar Avatar

    Right Babar, perhaps we are being subjected to an imported version of the Great Firewall of China. The DNS servers, BTW, point to:
    Name Server: NS1.MYDYNDNS.ORG
    Name Server: NS2.MYDYNDNS.ORG

  15. Epigneenoible Avatar
    Epigneenoible

    Thak you for the news

  16. Stinky60 Avatar

    What I'd like to see, then, is a separating-out of what's rustic and what's needed for public health, for the environment, and, in terms of taste, for food to be fresh. ,

  17. Bilal shah Avatar

    Now a days Zong is doing non-sens and third class busness,

    damn on zong and its managment, for futher detail contact me at 0314-9202025 which in port in another network.

  18. Faheem Mumtaz Avatar

    Its now common. Mobile companies in Pakistan lies to customers. and no body is there to stop or ask them