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How Slow is your Internet at Night?

I thought it was just me but I’ve been made aware that a lot of other people are facing the same issue. During the day my Zain 5G connection is around 400-500Mbps which is great. At night on the other hand I’ve been getting anywhere from 2Mbps to 10Mbps. 10Mbps is pretty high actually since I’ve been mostly averaging around 2Mbps at night which as you can imagine is frustratingly slow. Oddly, Netflix works perfectly and streams at 4K but I can barely load a story on Instagram or even load photos on Reddit. A follower on twitter told me that’s probably because Netflix is cached locally through Zain which could explain why it’s still performing well.

Have you been facing a similar issue? If yes share your details since maybe there is a pattern, here are mine:

Location: Salmiya, Block 9
ISP: Zain 5G
Day: 400-500Mbps
Night: 2-10Mbps

To run a speed test click here.

74 replies on “How Slow is your Internet at Night?”

Yes, Ever since the Lockdown started , internet speeds seem to have reduced.. expecially after 4 pm. (Salmiya-Block 10). Tried 4G and 5G.. and all the same. Instagram, facebook , twitter all will not show feed.. or rather show em with lots of time consumed.
Going to be interesting, when Justice League ZS cut comes out and would end up having to download 7GB worth or data, this weekend

Mine started around a week before curfew (Zain 5G) too and I know someone who lives in Salmiya on Zain 5G who’s problems started the same day.

I’m in Mangaf.

I was hoping you might run something on this and they might actually listen because they sure don’t care about an expat when you ring them 🙁

Mine is 0.69 mbps. Its frustrating to work from home with this speed. I have complained to my service provider STC. This is in block 10 Salmiya.

Weird but I found it on Telegram.

(Yes very weird but yeah)

Apparently just look up “Justice League” and search for it in “Chats” and download the links and enjoy.

(I used from the chat that had a profile picture of Wanda Vision)
Cheers!

So I am not alone….thanks for this,I was planning to switch my service provider due to slow speed in the evenings/night

It’s Terrible 🙁

I sit at home at night, I can’t listen to music, I can’t read, I can’t watch anything on TV, I can’t surf the internet, I can’t play games 🙁

I’m alone on curfew and I literally sit on my sofa and stare at the walls in silence from around 4pm when I get home, until midnight when I can go to bed.

Zain 5G
Mangaf
43KD a month (!)
Daytime : 50Mbits/s
From 5pm. Nothing. I can’t even connect to the Speedtest to run it. I literally have no internet at all. Can’t even sign in to my Xbox to run it in offline mode 🙁

Hi!

Which block in Mangaf are you living at? I was contemplating going in for a Zain 5g connection but they only have a 2 year commitment plan.
I currently have an Adsl connection which gets disconnected every day for about 15 to 30 mins. Evening and sometimes during the days speeds are dismal. I average around 3 to 5 mb max on a good day else it’s 1 to 3mb.

Hello!

Another Mangaf Resident Here (Block 1), I used to have a 50MB Fiber Optic subscription from Fasttelco for about 3 years and recently decided to switch to Zain 5G.

The Fiber Optic never cut out or slowed down actually, so for general browsing and gaming it really wasn’t bad at all. The reason why I decided to switch to 5G was simply for the download speeds, I watch a lot of shows and play a lot of games, so I’m CONSTANTLY downloading things (which is perfect on 5G speeds).

But it seems I made the switch at not the best time ever haha. Nevertheless I hit 400-500MB during the day which is glorious, and at night time I sometimes hit 200-300, and sometimes it just dips to 11-15mbps (but perhaps that’s due to the curfew and all)

nevertheless, for the last two days it didn’t slow down at night for me so that’s a good sign!

(Both my Fasttelco and my Zain 5G cost 20kd/Month)

Hope this helps!

Hi,

Mangaf resident here (Block 3). I guess Block 3 is not yet covered by Fibre optics so, that rules out fibre connection, or, is there a way to find out? I think the maximum speed my phone line supports is 6 MB. I am not much into games but I do watch a lot of shows, so yes download speeds are important.

When I first wanted to get Fiber optics, I called Fasttelco and if I recall correctly they asked for my address to verify if my specific location supports Fiber or not, they also verified the maximum speed my line can handle too.

The same process happened with Zain, the only difference is that you can only check if your specific house/building supports 5G when visiting a branch and not through the call center.

Best of luck!

Thanks soo much for the reply. With all complaining about the 5g performance, the only people not complaining are the ones using 4g! Might be worth trying it out for a month.

I’ve been experiencing the same with my Zain 4G internet from afternoon onwards and have been thinking of upgrading to 5G with either STC or Oreedo. No problem with Netflix but most other sites hopelessly slow

A copy of Netflix is stored on local servers, so instead of your internet trying to stream it from say a US server, it’s streaming it from inside Kuwait. So even if the internet to the outside world is slow, it doesn’t affect your ability to watch Netflix.

How Netflix works at my home in Kuwait City is still a mystery to me. I have a KEMS ADSL connection (6Mbps) and I am able to watch Netflix HD all the time.

If you use a US VPN, your IP will be US based, so netflix will serve you content directly from US servers, and to stream all of that through your VPN provider and back to your local ISP in Kuwait is same as fetching data from any website that’s outside Kuwait – which is painfully slow as people above have said.

It’s interesting to know Netflix is working. I might renew my subscription so at least I have something to do in the evening

Netflix should work fine, it`s streaming from regional servers.
Seems most issues are when you try to get out of GCC region and this means most of the action.
I`m running all test & connection speed tests against servers in US / UK / EU, as this is how the ISP connection is routed /traced and will give you a clearer indication of the real speed. testing against Zaim /Ooredoo/STC in Kuwait is same like testing against your own router, you`ll get very good speed and network parameters, but in the end you can`t read your email.

I’m in Block 10 Salmiya. I had the same problem with my 5G as well and had called Zain customer service around a week back. They told me to reset the router by pushing the button on the bottom. Speeds are much better after that.

2 Mbps to 1 Mbps is the speed for 10 Mbps Connection.

Download works but steaming of videos gets disconnected.

I have BWirelss 10 Mbps and same issue . Only after 4 pm its starts getting slow. Looks like Internet usage is peaked and we have bottleneck every where not in 4g or 5g network.

I’m not actually sure it’s a speed issue actually. And this might explain the Netflix working, at least with Zain.

When I spoke to Zain last night, they said it was an issue with their service across the whole of the GCC.

When the problem first started I was getting DNS server issues. I wonder if it’s an intermittent problem with some of their hardware that manifests itself when certain conditions are met (such as overload). For example, even with no internet I still get all the notifications from websites and services (such as the latest headlines from apple news) but when I click to read the story the site wont open. If it was simply a case of no internet, then I wouldn’t even get the headline notification.

Likewise with my Xbox – I can’t even sign in, something that shouldn’t need any kind of internet speed whatsoever.

I’m not convinced it’s just a speed issue but I am no expert.

What are the actual DL/UL values you get at different times of day, your ping & jitter? Fortnite will work nicely on a 20-30Mb DL speed.

Same problem here, it gets really slow. When that happens I switch to my STC 5G router (which I usually use only for gaming)

Same issues, Zain 4G, even daytime for my children’s e-learning calls sometimes.

Zain 4G
Salwa Block 4
9.25 MBPs

Salmiya Block 12 .. STC 5G ..

Same issue. Started a week before the curfew as well. Like everyday now. Yesterday was the worst started acting up like a yoyo going up and down dropping from 15.00 HRS through 02.00 AM.

NETFLIX was working fine no issues but everything else wasn’t. Kept hearing the kids screaming from the other side of the house in frustration coz their online classes and tutors were fading in and out and their studies were interrupted. Hell even the maid complained that face time with her mother and kids in Manila was getting interrupted.

At one point I had to actually reset the whole thing just to see if it helped. It didn’t do much .

When we first upgraded to 5G like a year ago, it was awesome. Then after 05 months in , it started getting sporadic mostly between 11.30 and 13.30 in the afternoon and at night between midnight and 01.00 AM no biggy for me coz I wasn’t home anyways in the afternoon and at night NETFLIX would still be working and kids and the rest of the household were fast asleep.

What’s weird is that the first time when we were doing the upgrading process; the STC people told me that 5G works best between the ground and the 6th floor and starts getting bad as you go further up.

I was like ok coz that it didn’t effect me anyways. The apartment building is only 4 floors and we have signal repeater in my apartment between the top floor and the ground floor.to keep the WIFI signal strong between the living area and the bedrooms. On top of that when STC did a PACI check to verify the coverage area they came back and said we were located in a green zone with extremely good coverage.

So the drop in signal lately is quite surprising and irritating. The whole point of the upgrading was because of all the online schooling and working from home stuff and to make sure everyone was getting enough signal / bandwidth to work with without any interruptions.

If it happens again today STC is gonna get an extremely nasty phone call from a pissed customer

Love the engagement on posts to do with internet speeds here lmao. But yeah, can confirm STC 5G in Fintas Block 4 is struggling in the evening. Unsure about morning time.

Maybe it’s another shark attack on the cables?? Honest to God it seems impossible to have reliable internet infrastructure here

I thought my router dying and bought new router, facing same issues.

The Call center at 107, when ask for agent directs to Chat Bot, which is useless.

Location: Salmiya, Block 10
ISP: Zain 4G
Day: 25 – 35 Mbps
Night: 0.8 – 0.3 Mbps

Same issue, its due to international link congestion,

so what happened recently, MOC changed their international link policy, they reduced the prices by 55% but removed the free capacity was given back then as additional free add on for the services providers and with the lockdown starting at 5PM.

with people sitting at home with nothing but internet ( and everything is internet based now days), their links are getting filled up quickly which causes performance issue which is why its super slow and causes packet lost, high latency and so on.

the only way they fix it is to get extra International Bandwidth to solve the issue but thats also a cost so I’m guessing they will wait till lockdown are removed and usage of the internet spreads along the whole day instead of just evening

Zain 5G – Salmiya Block 3
Quality of the internet connection has gone really bad since curfew started or at least this is when it became noticeable. My main issue is the stability, DL speeds are going from 1-2Mbps to 400+Mbps in matter of minutes, if I run 10 consecutive tests against the same server I get results ranging from disaster to very good, no consistency.
And jitter is amazing, last night I got the highest register one at over 265ms.
Called Zain, got the usual protocol (restart, reboot, reset etc) and since all these were already performed, they registered a complaint, #1572270, which was “solved” as in “it worked for one day”..Lol

All fun and games until Kuwaiti telecoms lobby against the import of Starlink receivers because it will hurt their revenue.

I expect nothing less. They will freak out that its uncensored too. Which is why I plan on buying a receiver soon, about a year before the expected launch in this part of the world. Thankfully it’s a pretty tiny receiver and it finds the best satellite autonomously, so its a simple setup.

I’m still on 4g …. prefer not to move to 5G
Speed at 5 pm – 2mbps max
Speed after 1am – 80mbps

It’s the isp to blame. They put a cap on the internet they give to the people n then it’s further more reduced as to what v receive….

Probably they have to include more towers 😊😊😊… dsl in the 2000’s was much better 😂😂

Still not sure my experience is relevant but after reading all the comments it may be useful to someone. I’ve been using Zain Bolt B818 router for a long time without issues, and a week ago I started having may of the problems described here. I was at the point where I considered buying another router, but finally out of desperation I tried an advice I found on some random forum and changed preferred network mode from Auto to 4G and Network search mode to Manual and I’ve had no problems ever since (that was two days ago). Maybe it will help someone as well.

I am not sure if the connectivity is dependent on the area where you live in. I had recently switched from Zain to Ooredoo since ooredoo had no commitment plans and also based on the Redditt references that it’s better in Salmiya block 10.

True somehow Netflix was ok with my Zain connection earlier. also check out if upgrading to a better router might help?

Using STC 5g in salmiya block 11. Can’t complain, in fact at day I am around 300-400 and at night I hit deep 800s so yea it’s pretty good, didn’t really have any issues yet

I think Zain may just be throttling the net speed in order to be able to cope with network load. Especially now with the curfew in place, when one would expect most of the people to sit at home and use the Internet. 😉

I have 5g from stc and zain, both are disaster. If you live on 5 th floor and above the internet speed is slow across all Salmiya. Even when I was buying the router, the manager told me the same.
All towers height in Kuwait is very low and not reachable properly by the routers

Abdullah Alsalim B1 (Right next to the tower)
ISP: Zain 5G
Before the Curfew: 400Mbps (Prime Time) 800+Mbps (Dead Time)
After the Curfew: 5-10Mbps (Prime Time) 20-30 (DeadTime)

Salmiya Block 9 here as well.. it’s terrible.. I contacted Zain and they said restart your router and put it near a window.. which solved nothing of course and it’s already by a window! And I didn’t move in the first place and it used to be MUCH better..

Totally screwed up how we have commitment contracts when they are not respecting their end of the deal and giving us internet that is literally unusable!

Zain’s 5G network collapses much faster than other carriers such as STC & Ooredoo due to network bottlenecking & over capacity due to aggressive marketing campaigns.

Even for me, i am staying in Khaitan, Block 10 and even i was getting around 5Mpbs – 10Mbps after afternoon time. But i found a work around, it works 95% of the times. i am using Zain btw When u are getting low speeds:

1) Reboot ur router, when i reboot my speeds go back up to 100Mbps plus (No where near 400Mbps plus during the day time)
2) Place ur router near a windows or anywhere where the 5g tower is there. BTW there is a 5g tower ( or base station) few meters away from my building and i can see it through my window

Ever since i placed near the windows my speeds haven’t gone down below 100Mbps. and even if the speed goes down i reeboot

I live on the 10th floor and am still getting good speeds at night

It should be much better from today. There was an ongoing outage on submarine cable since almost a month which was resolved today. Performance should be improve.

Good to know I’m not the only one facing this, I have been complaining non-stop to Ooredoo for a week now. Mine started the week after curfew it fluctuates throughout the day going from fast to moderate to super slow. I work from home now so its really annoying sometimes I can’t even login to my afternoon teams meetings and have to use my phone’s hotspot “STC” to login and can’t stream anything at night. I wanted to watch ZSJL with my Hbomax subscription but the slow buffering is probably going to make me lose my mind.

Location: Jaber Alali, Block 2
ISP: Ooredoo 5G
Day: 500-600Mbps “pre curfew ” now around 300-400
Night: 1-10Mbps

Oreedo, Salmiya Block 9. Internet is horrible after 7/8p pm. Whatsapp doesn’t seem to work let alone Netflix. I don’t even bother checking the speed anymore and worst part is they just renewed my router last month so I have to wait a whole year with their speed.. Yay…

Yes. I’m living in Salwa and have a STC 5G, can’t play (or watch anything) for shit at night and two nights ago the internet actually went down for the whole night. They need to figure something out cause internet is the ONLY source of entertainment here.

Khaldiya:

5G with Zain used to average 300-400 Mbps throughout the day…my most recent test at 7:30 pm on March 20 was less than 1 Mbps, and this has been the norm for the past 2 weeks and yet Zain will still require me to pay for the full price at the end of the month !!

I stay in Salmiya block 10. For me the problem started about 2 weeks before the curfew. I have the 5G Zain connection for which I am paying KD 17 per month. The speed was good earlier. Speed test used to show me more than 300 Mbps (well I had come to accept 300Mbps as an acceptable 5G speed).

About 2 weeks before the curfew the speed test started showing 4 to 6 Mbps. Now that was pathetic. I took Zain thinking Zain performs better than others. May be I was wrong.

Looks like 5G is really turning out to be a scam and almost everyone is on a contract for 2 years. Sad. I’m still on Zain 4G and looks like I’m better off.

Mishref Block 4
Morning – 90Mbps Up and 40 Down
Nighttime – 80-85Mbps Up and 25-30 Down

Yes, this 5G is not fully operational in Kuwait but carriers are forcing customers to take it that too on minimum 2 year contract which is pointless. You want us to go for 5G, then don’t put it on a contract basis that too for 2 years; and its price doesn’t come reasonable/cheap after expecting the speeds you should be getting.I was planning on to go to 5G but then changed my mind and went for DSL instead which is still better off.

DSL is super slow compared to 5G and more expensive. The fastest DSL speed is what? 50Mbps for like 35KD a month? 5G is 10 times faster and like half that price so not sure what you mean 5G isn’t operational in Kuwait, even when 5G is slow it’s like at least 4 times faster than DSL.

Yes 5G maybe fast but it doesn’t work in all areas/Blocks; maybe for you yes as you stay in “good location”. Dsl for normal internet users(who aren’t much into online gaming) is good enough is what I meant.

Ooredoo is the worst in terms of internet service and their customer service is horrible….

I am using ooredoo internet service provider here in block 12 salmiya, worst thing is that when you complain about slow internet, their customer service agent seem to convince you forcefully that everything is working perfectly. i wonder why they are not taking these complaint seriously?
These internet service provider should be investigated in timely manner for their claims, as they are taking money by providing very low quality services.

My noticeable issues with Zain 5G started about 2 weeks ago. After 5 pm the internet is basically unusable (outside of Netflix).

I’ve tried moving the routers, restoring factory settings, switching sim cards, using only 2.4Ghz frequency, using only 5Ghz frequency, connecting to only one device.

I’ve been on the phone with Zain a bunch of times, I currently have a complaint being investigated. I read on a forum elsewhere about installing a wifi antenna, it costs about 50kd but I kind of feel like why should I have to pay more to get a service to work that I’m already paying for (2 routers Huawei and HTC @ 31KD per month).

One of my routers is dedicated solely to PS4 Pro, I was having 300+ Mbps Download, 30+ Upload when first installed.

Location: Fnaitees, Block 6
ISP: Zain 5G
Day: 15 – 30Mbps Download, 5 – 10 Upload
Night: 1 – 10Mbps Download, kbps Upload

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