I have Zain 5G at the office in the city and I average around 650Mbps there which is pretty incredible. This got me curious to see how 5G would perform at my apartment in Salmiya so Zain hooked me up with a unit to try out. Right now I have a Zain Beam connection at home and I get a stable 30Mbps.
My experience so far with 5G in Salmiya has been really weird. I’ve gotten speeds as low as 3Mbps and as high as 350Mbps. I don’t understand why the speed fluctuates so much here. I’m gonna continue to experiment with it and move the router around to see if that helps. If I can get a stable connection over 100Mbps that would be pretty crazy considering just up until a few months ago, I couldn’t get anything higher than 10Mbps at my place.
Update: Problem got solved, click here for an updated post.
20 replies on “First Impression: Zain 5G in Salmiya”
Are you connecting directly to the router or to a network extender?
I would love 5G but I would also love if it was cheaper than the installments you would pay on a new car, the telecoms are taking advantage of their monopoly now.
I’m connecting directly to it.
You can’t call it a monopoly when there are three competing telecom operators btw… a monopoly is when one company doesn’t have competition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
ya. more like oligopoly
I think the correct word is Cartel.
Also possibly could be called Mafia.
Also called extortion. Somehow my data cap is reached way before the cellular data counter on my iPhone (which I reset).
A gigabyte with Zain remind me of Egyptian Pounds – it won’t get you much.
i enjoy hating on the telecoms as much as the next guy, but the prices are only slightly unreasonable.
For example, if you pay 10kd a month for a 4g connection (1TB cap) for a 50Mbps connection, paying 4.5x should be reasonable just for getting a 4.5 times speed boost (~225Mbps), with the same cap. Of course, speeds always fluctuate and you would expect a higher cap with 5g for various reasons, but it’s hard to put a price on it. As a heavy internet user (streaming videos 8 hours a day + downloading games all the time), i can’t even hit 500GB per month.
Also, is it really a monopoly when multiple companies are offering the same thing? price-fixing maybe?
the current pricing seems to be targeted at hardcore/extreme users.
Only 4G never reaches 50Mbps…
well that depends on where you live, I’m currently using Ooredoo 1TB plan that cost 11kd and I’m currently pulling 100mbps to 150mbps I live in Salmyia btw. on a side note, the lowest I got was 45mbps
What router are you using?
sorry for the delayed reply im using Netgear Nighthawk M2
Is there an option for me to pay 1 KD for a 100GB cap by this logic
I pay 3kd for 200gb cap 4g but those sims are no longer available
good point. from a purely technical and economic standpoint, the cost per 100GB to the telecom does not change no matter how much you use it (insignificant economies of scale). the telecoms charge you more because they know they can. They make a massive profit off the fact that you won’t use your entire data cap, and don’t offer cheaper plans.
Having said that, i will point out that kuwait has one of the cheapest and most well-regulated ISP industries in the world.
Same thing with me. I live in Jabriya and got 5G from day 1. At the time used to get anything from 200 to 800Mbps.
Nowadays, it roams at around 15 Mbps on a good day with the occasional drop off in signal. Haven’t really bothered contacting Zain about this as I am sure I would get one excuse or another
mark from what I understand 5g works best if you’re in a direct unobstructed line on sight from the node. find out where the nearest node is to you and point to device to it.
https://youtu.be/_CTUs_2hq6Y
That’s totally different 5G tech in the video than the one in Kuwait. It’s called mmWave, it has very short distance. Here in Kuwait we use Sub 6Ghz 5G, it has normal range as 4G.
Interesting, but I think Mark would still get a small speed boost if he has direct line of sight.
Won’t this congest the bandwidth spectrum? and what are the pros and cons of both technologies?
5G coverage depends heavily upon the proximity of the user to the 5G transmitters and the Line Of Sight between the user’s 5G device and the transmitter. Maybe in the city, the transmitter is at LOS to your device that’s why you’re getting good speeds.