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Is your internet slow?

slowinternet

I got a lot of emails over the holidays from readers (mostly Qualitynet users) complaining about how their internet has been really slow. According to two people, Qualitynet told them its because of a fiber optic cable that was cut. I couldn’t find any information on this but as a WiMD internet user myself, my connection has also been slow averaging less than 1Mbps instead of my usual 10Mbps.

So if you’ve been having connection issues, let me know below.

124 replies on “Is your internet slow?”

Yes ,
My viva 4G LTE is so slow before couple weeks. And also not working in subiya site nearby power plant.
But bills send time to time and i pay.please anyone help

YES – the whole gulf area has been affected from the fiber cut , it is effecting on all the ISPs’ in kuwait .

internet problems here as well, especially streaming sites like youtube etc… been acting up for the past couple weeks.

Well i have Kems connection and VIVA on mobile.. Used to have 20MB on Landline but nowadays its running at 0.5Mbs cant even run Youtube or do my work 🙁

Hahahaha I better be thankful that at least i got some speed.. But i gotta admit yesterday net wasn’t all that slow.. (yesterday got 4 MB)

Fasttelco 40MB and I’m getting it all

Seriously. I admit it has been the best in Kuwait, after seeing the tweeter and all the complains, thanks God , first time to make the right choice 😉

I have 30mbps fiber internet from FT, too. I really think FT is the best fiber internet provider in Kuwait, but, I have to say I have slow internet, too 🙁

I never got less than 30mbps so I was wondering what made my internet so slow…

Hi Mark,
What you said is right. There is undersea fiber optic cable that is damaged.
As I understand, ISP’s provide bandwidth to other providers, mobile networks and WiMD. so it will reflect everywhere.

Qualitynet.
Been getting worse over the last 2 weeks. Specifically accessing non-local sites e.g. bbc.co.uk. I read a short notice on KuwaitUpToDate about a marine fibre optic cable being damaged. This was confirmed on the Qualitynet facebook page and also their recorded message when I rang to complain.
But the problem has been chronic for too long now – they state 5 to 10 days for it to be fixed since thurs 25th dec.
My problem is with the way they pass the buck. They seem to imply that an international marine cable has been damaged – hence the local v international website issue. Yet I’ve managed to connect to my neighbour’s madaSOHO and have had no problems connecting to international websites etc.
Now, in my opinion, any ISP in Kuwait would use the same cables to route these sites to us, so why can’t Qualitynet?
I believe that they have other problems that they aren’t owning up to and telling us about.

As received from KEMS:

Dear Valued Customer,

Please be informed that there is an outage in our major capacities and you will face degraded performance on the internet service.

We are following up with the upstream provider for a speedy resolution of the same.

Zajil Telecom Co., regret for any inconvenience caused to your Organization.

Best Regards,
Network Operations
Zajil International Telecom Co.

Has there been any indication of when this issue might be fixed? Also who is responsible for fixing it, the government?

If it’s a fiber line outside of Kuwait it’s not the government either, there’s a company responsible for it

Got an email from Zajil as below

Dear Customer,

Further to our earlier email regarding Degraded / intermittent slow response over the internet service, we are still awaiting updates from our upstream provider regarding Submarine cable fault isolation.
We are constantly following up this matter with our provider and we will keep you updated as we receive any further updates.

We thank you for your patience and cooperation with us in this regard.

Network Operation Center (NOC)

Zajil Telecom Company (1 821821)

im with Kems. same here

called them up, and they also told me a fiber line somewhere in kuwait was cut. i ask them when will it be fixed, their reply?

*Inshallah soon*

im with Fasttelco. And things are normal and stable for the past 1 month. I heard Fasttelco implemented the back up plan, which is a unique action first time on the ISP level in Kuwait, and It is paying off

Same here. Fasttelco user and things are normal for me (sometimes the internet is slow and sometimes it’s ok)

I’m on Mada and it’s supposed to be a 10mb connection……..been averaging 2mb for months now and it has slowed for the past couple weeks, other than that…..it’s one of the gayest connections! and should be distributed for free whenever you buy ban’nek.

When are we gunna get some proper bandwidth?

move to a proper company. MADA is shit. so many people in Kuwait fall for their fake (uncapped bandwidth) bullshit.

thanks Jake, I only went with Mada for wireless convenience. I was with Qnet but the landline was out of order for close to a year due to government “upgrade” and I got shafted!!
I asked a Mada customer service rep about any upgrades on the horizon and he told me they were in talks with however to add bandwidth up to 20mb. Doesn’t mean much if they keep capping it though.
My dl does reach in the 7-8mb range early in the morning on direct downloads but my torrents are suffering – max 2mb dl.

Yep, paying top dollar for a sub standard service with no compensation when things go bad AGAIN. Thanks, I love it. Not.

No Q net internet connection at all for past 4 days in mangaf area. The pre recorded message on their help line mentions fiber optic cable being cut outside kuwait

agreed i like it too , but this problem is for everyone 🙁

does anyone know which cable has the problem ?

Not only Qualitynet, i am a Zain LTE user, i live in Shaab, and still my internet connection doesn’t even reach more than 8Mbps, and this is rare!! The average speed am getting is 3.2 to 3.45Mbps download! And am paying 24KD/month!!!!!
I was in Beirut and i have a 4G connection and i got a steady speed of 48.04Mbps download!! And what is more amazing is that the upload is always way more than the download!!!

Holy crap, thought it was just me all this time. Yes, Internet has been turtle slow lately (started a few days ago for me). All the videos on YouTube want to stream at 144p and it still involves a wait.

i have 5mb connection from qualitynet. i cant seem to use torrent and almost everything is pretty slow. i thought i had some issue in my connection because torrent works fine with the vpn. i’m kinda relived that most of us are facing the same problem.

Hi Mark,

Basically, all ISPS in Kuwait “rent” bandwidth from international providers, IE: GBI, FOG, TELIA, MOBILY… etc.

Smart ISPs do not depend on one provider for bandwidth, what they do is rent a few gigs of bandwidth per sec off each. (decision is really made by the management on how much to take off each) Anyway, in their case, their main provider dropped thus they had to shift all their users to the remaining providers.

What this means is basically this

X ISP has

1gig from Mobily
3gigs from FOG
2gigs from GBI
3gigs from TATA

X ISP’s total bandwidth is 9gigs.
Their users utilization is 5gigs, so they still have 4gigs of bandwidth buffer.

Mobily and FOG go down due to a cable cut, they lose 4gigs, now their utilization=their cap. which means slowness, and if it exceeds, you get mega slowness.

I’m too lazy to type cuz i’m eating but you get the idea.

Tata does not land in kuwait. Mobily is a terrestrial cable so if there were to be a cut it can be fixed in a matter of hours if not 1 full day. Submarine takes longer.

Gulfnet here, torrent is fine, I can’t really judge because i use a very moody tracker.., but when it downloads i get full speed.
also been playing online video games, all is cool.
though sometimes things do seem to be struggling.

I’ve got the little ooretardoo box and I thought it was because everyone is off for the holidays and online. But I can still watch my tv shows from the states online so I’m cool but YouTube is crap.

I left Kuwait a week ago for the holidays and noticed Qualitynet was extremely slow. The cut cable story — it’s the same story Qnet told us 5 years ago when the service was horrible. Just arriving from the state’s at the time I couldn’t believe the cut cable story — they said when a ship pulled up anchor that caused the cable to snap! Huh? But I guess it’s true and history is repeating itself!

There are actual undersea cables that are cut, it’s not Qnet trying to cover up. These cuts often happen pretty far away from Kuwait but affect our routing.

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

There’s a very detailed map there, you can see how a cable cut as far as Egypt can affect us

Well I’ve got the 4G Viva and it has been slow since I subscribed (more than one year ago) so it’s not a new thing to me anyways 😛

Hi,
There was a MOC fiber cut around last weekend
I’ve read the MDT
MOC does take such issues seriously and is working on it; I’m not a spokesman but from the field

Honestly, no one is to be blamed. It’s Nature vs. Technology 🙂

WIMD user here.

Problem started around 5 days ago.

Online gaming is frustrating now with +250MS on most online games specially World of Warcraft.

Subbed with 10MB. UP and Down test still give me the usual speed but everything else is VERY slow!

Called them and they gave me the same excuse which was a cable cut.

Lets just hope they solve this ASAP and get back to gaming!

Lucky you, when I called WiMD they said nothing was wrong but they would open a ticket for me. Next day someone calls me up from WiMD and he’s like as you know we can only guarantee 10Mbps to local servers and not US servers. I was like first of all I’ve been using WiMD for years now so don’t talk to me as if I just signed up. Second of all I’m not calling you to complain I am getting 9Mbps instead of 10 or even 7Mbps instead of 10, I’m calling because I’m getting 0.6Mbps instead of 10. That’s a fucking issue from your side!

I use Viva LTE (mini Router) , Zain LTE (mobile), Ooredoo LTE (mobile) they are all aweful and so slow that I started using my home internet connection thats FastTeleco

Mark, I’m a WIMD user too. just disconnect/reconnect in hope to get a better connection with another ISP since WIMD utilize different local ISP’s. been doing this when I notice slow internet, reboot router or reconnect pppoe and things go back to normal (10 mbps).

Yes it has been quite bad recently (QualityNet user). Weird thing is that it shows fine on SpeedTest but actual performance is so bad that I have to switch on my mobile internet at home at times.

True, but is that possible that the SpeedTest shows one thing and the actual performance is different?

The speedtest will, as a default, check Kuwait to Kuwait connections which will be very fast.

I have Qnet and if I connect Kuwait to Kuwait I get 20Mbps. If I connect to Europe or US via VPN, I get 0.1Mbps or sometimes it just won’t connect.

That’s true
I have Viva mini router 4G, it was more than enough for the past couple of months. but for around 1 week (or maybe more) it becomes slow.
On the internet speed it gives me 13 MB but it took me more than 5 minutes to watch 3 minutes video on YouTube.

QualityNet user here.
I thought I was the only one. The connection is next to unusable, especially in the evenings.
I sent a complaint thinking it is something from my side, but did not receive any response from QualityNet.

I’m using Qualitynet internet at my flat, which is way too slow since last 2 weeks or more. Living at Hawally 4th Ring road.

Speedtest shows 5mbps download speed, but actual is less than 50kbps all the time even.

Not sure, when it will be up and running as usual again.

I think you should use VIVA. I’m using viva and their Internet is blazing fast and I get around 46 mbps and at peak hours I get around 23mbps and I only pay 6kd per month. You should definitely try VIVA out!

MADA:
current torrent speed: 113 KB/s
Speed test while loading: Less than 0.55 Mbps

VIVA 4G:
Speed test: 20.86 Mbps

TBH, I don’t have any browsing issues, nor any major disruptions. What I do suffer of is during certain hours in games my latency goes up to 200MS. but that only lasts for like 30mins then back to 80MS.

I use fasttelco 20Mbs. Qualitynet has a huge client base and they refuse to upgrade their service especially after MOC price cuts, that’s the real issue, otherwise there are international links who are running at full capacity, it’s just a matter of PAYING.

and this is coming from a telecom engineer.

Holla

Hey there ,, I just wanted to ask about the location of the server that you would get 80ms at since i always get 150+ms to any US / EU server .. Thanks !

Quality net, been slow for ’bout a week and counting. Works fine alright on my phone though, guess cause its a smaller device compared to my laptop or desktop. Qualitynet needs to get some thicker fuckin cables, shit keeps gettin cut all the time.

Just did a speedtest with Zain.

Area: Shuwaikh Administrative

11ms to Zain Servers (not great — usually less than 10)
24.33 Down
67.87 Up

I’ve heard that uploads shouldn’t be higher than download — that it’s a sign of a problematic connection (except on satellite-based connections) I don’t know how accurate that statement is though.

As user experience, connecting to:

Netflix (via VPN): decent connection, hardly any problems.

PSN: decent up till friday night (Playing Destiny, BF4 and Fifa 15). Since Friday night, there have been many instances of disconnection from servers, jitter, and slow connection/downlaod speeds.

Youtube: Appalling most of the time (even before this past month)

Just an FYI: torrent downloads are no indicator of how fast your connection is, there are many variables that determine how fast you, as a torrent peer, can download.

For those that want some sort of download indicator apart from speedtest, you can use a download file KEMS has up on their speedtest servers, just download the file and look at the speed you get. Here’s the link: https://test.kems.net/testfile.zip

Hope to get this annual obstacle out of the way.

Umm dude, this is pointless, you will get full speed locally as long as your connection to their network is fine, the cut is somewhere outside Kuwait

paid for 20mb, now i get 1 to 2mb. and that is just what the speedtest.net reads. i believe as if i got the dial-up package or something. cant game, youtube barely streams. shit

FOG and GBI are facing cable cuts. the only submarine cable left landing in kuwait is Reliance/Falcon/GCX. Its gonna take a while for things to workout.

So here’s something interesting.

I’m using Qualitynet, and just got back to Kuwait yesterday. Torrents refused to even connect. I connected to my VPN service, tried again, and lo and behold: getting 600-800 KB/s download speed.

It seems Qnet decided to block some ports/implement some artificial speed restraints on users while they deal with the capacity issue, and encrypting your connection bypasses their BS systems.

VIVA is slow where is my REFUND or A free Month. when you pay for a service and it is not delivered I expect compensation!

Meh pretty much frustrating , I dont really think that i can handle it to 12/2 , No anime , No onling gaming , No streams ._.
Kems user here though .

Qualitynet user here:
the internet is so slow, I’m using 12Mb/s speed, and I’m getting 2mb/s Down and 4mb/s up when connecting to NewYork.

I don’t get it ! when I use Speedtest site, it looks normal. And when I download a test file from a local ISP provider (Qualitynet, Fastelco, KEMS) , it is normal. But , when I download a torrent file from any server it is slower by half.
I use Fastelco.

I found this on the abc NEWS site:

Anchor caused cut in Gulf Internet cable
CAIRO
By Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press

An abandoned anchor was responsible for cutting one of the undersea Internet cables severed last week, causing disruptions across the Middle East and parts of Asia, the cable’s owner said Friday.

A FLAG Telecom repair crew discovered the anchor near where the fiber-optic cable was severed Feb. 1 in the Persian Gulf, 35 miles north of Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman.

Weighing more than 5.5 tons, the anchor has been pulled to the surface. The company did not immediately explain whether the anchor moved and snapped the cable or whether the cable itself was drifting when it was sliced.

It remains unclear exactly how any of the cuts occurred.

It also was unclear whether FLAG knew what vessel the anchor belonged to. Rough weather was reported nearby at the time of the cut, but conditions have improved since.

Meanwhile, a second FLAG repair ship continued work on two undersea cables that were cut Jan. 30. They are about 5 miles off the north coast of Egypt, near the port city of Alexandria, and run between Egypt and Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily.

Repairs at both locations are expected to be done by Sunday.

One of the two Mediterranean cables was owned by FLAG. The other, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable, was owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.

Egypt’s telecommunication ministry said no ships were registered near the location at the time.

The cuts slowed businesses, hampered personal Internet usage and caused a flurry of Internet blogger speculation, including mentions of sabotage. Government authorities and FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, have refused to comment on the speculation.

Reports of additional cuts in Middle East Internet cables could not be confirmed.

Guys Its me Again..Right now using my VIVA Connection and i am happy to say that the speed i am getting is better then before

i am getting 16MB on speedtest and downloading speed is way better then before (reached 1mb like before NOT TORRENTS Normal downloads)

So i believe the net is now fixed Plz reply and let me know if your connections are working fine now

Regards

It’s usually good during the morning until 1 PM when they tweak something at their side or i dont know how then it becomes terrible again until the morning of the next day ..

hmm I agree with you.. I faced the same problem.. My net was working soo fast in the morning (16MB) when i got home 5MB but we have to keep in mind that the location also matters (i kept my router near the window but and had full signal but what can i say…

Anyways Kems still running at 1 or 2MB no change what so ever.

Talked a bit with Kems and they informed me that the submarine cable issue is getting fixed this weak .
Hopefully ..

Did some research on my own –

The thing which i noticed is that KEMS and other Internet connection have re-routed to a faster net provider but thats ONLY FOR A CERTAIN TIME LIMIT (Cap ??)

Its like from – 5am -> 9 or 10PM -> Full Speed (20mb for me)
then 11PM -> 4am -> DEAD SLOW SPEED (1Mb which is like using 56k Modem as NOTHING WORKS)

Viva is following the same rules but

Its like from – 5am -> 9 or 10PM -> Full Speed (20mb for me)
then 11PM -> 4am -> NORMAL SPEED (3Mb)

If i notice anything else will let you all know 🙂

Hope the problem gets fixed within this week
as INFOCONNECT is coming on 25th JAN so its a must it gets fixed otherwise the companies cant show off there new and improved speed

there is a FoG cable damage towards Kuwait Iran side no permission given yet to vessel as to fix the cable cut this is the last info got

VIVA 4G Lite router. Currently getting a top speed of 30 kb/sec with a minimum of no connection. About done paying for this crap

Hahahahahah!!!!!
Qualitynet
Gulfnet
viva,zain,or wataniya
when ever you call them and ask why is the internet speed slow ?
The only answer you will get, some underwater fiber cables are cut.

I am using the fiber connection in salwa it is not as good as what they say. Right now my fiber optic box is damaged and needs a new box, I went to the government beside Honda Canada Dry road and they said to replace your box you will need to wait a year or saw. Because the siemens deal is no longer available and there is no boxes in the ministry.

I had cancelled kems and switched to zain for their low prices, now I’m switching back to kems. Their speeds are much more reliable. Zain lte sucks in khaitan

Its me from mahaboula.. Its too much slow sometime. I am using ooredoo internet. What should i do fro speed up the internet speed? sometime in will take more than 5 minute to open a webpage??

Guys,please do not choose viva.I bought a line 7 months back and after that it’s so slow.
If u want to try VIVA’s internet buy a postpaid subscription for 12 months commitment,if u buy 24 month commit,u want to stop the internet and then you have to pay a termination fee. I recommend taking a Ooredoo or Zain line

I have switched to Ooredoo from zain but the same problem low internet speed.
I don’t understand which service to opt.
Currently changed my area and moved to khaitan block 4.
Ooredoo gives speed of 1-4 mbps and zain no need to count it is in kbps.
Guys suggest.

I don’t believe the “cable cut” story. If that were the case, why, when the internet is slow to non existent in my apartment with Viva, can I walk to the end of the street or even into the apartment lobby and get really fast 4G+ on my Zain mobile. Other times my mobile will drop, but the apartment internet connection is “tolerable”.
The “cable cut” excuse is just that, an excuse. If the connecting cables were cut, it would effect all providers equally and at the same time I assume, not pick and choose times to effect each differently. I suspect more to do with poor infrastructure/equipment/mast placement etc.

I too face irregular internet speed with Zain mobile broadband connection in Kuwait. Sometimes it goes even to KBps download speeds.

Yes, my internet is super slow. It can’t load an image. It takes a lot of time to send a 1 min. video. It is KEMS. What is the problem?

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