A couple of weeks back I posted my first impression of Zain 5G at my apartment in Salmiya. I was having issues with speeds fluctuating from 3Mbps to 350Mbps and I couldn’t understand why. After my post, Zain ended up sending over a technician to look at the issue and it turned out to be a fairly simple fix.
This might get a bit nerdy but basically the 5G router has two kinds of wifi connections, a 2.4ghz and a faster 5ghz. The router I had received had been set up to combine the two wifi signals to one and depending on where I am in the apartment, the router would decide which connection I should be on. Whenever I was getting slow internet speeds it was because the router was connecting me at 2.4ghz. So we fixed this issue by having two separate wifi connections and I manually connect to the 5ghz one. We tried it out and it worked and after that issue was sorted I decided to just plug the 5G router to my home network which was already running at 5ghz and I’m really loving it now.
The lowest Zain 5G connection speed I’ve been getting is around 500-550Mbps. The connection usually hovers at around 650-750Mbps and on occasionally hits 1.0-1.2Gbps. It’s incredibly fast, like so fast I have no idea how I’m going back to my 30Mbps Zain Beam connection once I’m done with this review unit. I used to think my Beam connection was the fastest thing I could get in my apartment but I’m so blown away by 5G!
The only reason I haven’t posted a full review of the connection yet is I’ve now come across another issue. For some reason, my 5G connection at home currently dies on average once or twice a day and I need to restart the 5G router for it to come back to life. I spoke to support and we think something is wrong with the 5G router itself so I’m going to get it swapped out for another unit. My Zain 5G router at the office in comparison, I had to restart just once in the past 2-3 months since I’ve had it.
If you guys want me to try anything out or run a specific speed test then let me know in the comments below. Here is a link to the Zain 5G page.
50 replies on “Second Impression: Zain 5G in Salmiya”
so have you been able to do stuff you couldn’t before? watch 4k streams? multiple 4k streams? have you checked latency in games?
how’s the upload speed? can you stream videos at work from a home server, for example?
I haven’t tried multiple 4K streams but considering Netflix recommends 25Mbps for 4K and my Zain Beam is 30Mbps, I can now comfortably stream 4K on Apple TV while watching Youtube on my laptop and downloading apps in the background on my phone. I mean I have so much more bandwidth to use for various things with 5G.
Upload speed is similar to my Beam connection and you can see it in the screenshots above, around 30-40Mbps. I could stream videos from my home server to my phone with Zain Beam and it’s the same with 5G.
haven’t checked gaming latency since I don’t play games online
Not really related to the subject but how did you connect your zain to your home wifi? The one that comes with zain is a router itself right?
The 5G router has ethernet ports so just connected it to my home routher via ethernet.
Thanks
I’d be interested to see what the take up rate has been since they released 5g. Still seems pretty expensive right now and most people I know are waiting for a price drop before they commit. Especially as all packages are on a 24 month contract.
Pings to gaming servers – EU / NA / ME please
Can you give me the three servers you want me to ping to?
http://www.cloudping.info
Can you provide results after pinging through the following site? Thank you.
US-East (Virginia) 241 ms
US East (Ohio) 252 ms
US-West (California) 248 ms
US-West (Oregon) 258 ms
Canada (Central) 243 ms
Europe (Ireland) 145 ms
Europe (London) 132 ms
Europe (Frankfurt) 140 ms
Europe (Paris) 113 ms
Europe (Stockholm) 126 ms
Middle East (Bahrain) 76 ms
Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) 318 ms
Asia Pacific (Mumbai) 77 ms
Asia Pacific (Osaka-Local) 289 ms
Asia Pacific (Seoul) 315 ms
Asia Pacific (Singapore) 128 ms
Asia Pacific (Sydney) 460 ms
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) 297 ms
South America (São Paulo) 347 ms
China (Beijing) 339 ms
China (Ningxia) 353 ms
AWS GovCloud (US-East) 233 ms
AWS GovCloud (US) 289 ms
https://deepfocus.io/lol_ping.php can you click EUW and check the ping?
You can also check ping for other games on there like Overwatch and Fortnite.
Overwatch EU
Min Ping: 89
Range: 755 – 581
Max Ping: 630
Fortnite EU
Min Ping: 101
Range: 1099 – 841
Max Ping: 916
Min Ping: 193
Range: 910 – 758
Max Ping: 845
Thanks a lot
Could you also look at Fortnite pings for the Middle East servers
Mumbai 76
Frankfurt 119
Thanks Mark
Based on this the pings are the same as the 4G connection right now
Getting 70ms ping for Mumbai servers
If they still have the fair usage policy, the one that the MOC kind of forced isp’s hands due to bandwidth fees, then count me out.
hello, it’s well known that Zain’s connection in Salwa is terrible, I was wondering if anyone has an idea if it’s still the same case with the 5g??
thanks!
LTE at my place is horrible, 3Mbps max and 5G doesn’t seem to be related to that
Hey, any updates on Salwa…
i live in Salwa and still hesitated to which isp shall i go for… help please
If you want to really test it, try game streaming, for example Google Stadia.
I don’t do online gaming so if someone has a Mac or IOS app I can download and test the gaming speed or if anyone gives me game server iPs I can manually ping them and share the results
It’s not online gaming, it’s gaming from the could were you stream the game à la Netflix.
Congrats Mark. Amazing speeds.
I’m more interested in how can it keep up with congestion compared to 4G.
My only gripe about the current 5G offers is that Teclos are offering exponential speeds which in my opinion is overkill compared to their monthly caps which start with 260GB p/m up to 1.8TB where prices vary based on caps.
For 26KWD you get 260GB which in theory can be exhausted within a few minutes of downloading large files such as Steam updates or even setting up your new iPhone to download all the apps during initial setup.
Assuming you watch Netflix 4 hours a day with the highest bitrate of 4K which utilizes 7GB per hour this will amount to 4×7 which equals 28GB per day. multiply that with 30 days it will amount to 840GB. simple math shows their plans are a load of crap and offer no real edge over current 4G plans or even hardwired unlimited/unmetered plans from standard ISP’s
I really, really hope that Telcos will start offering unmetered plans with speed caps such as 100Mb connection or 200Mb etc…
I currently utilize fiber at home with 50Mb from Fasttelco and I can easily stream multiple 4K streams from multiple sources such as Netflix & YouTube all the while of me browsing websites or Instagram etc…
all that for a very low yearly price compared to 5G prices.
Well the edge for 5G right now is speed, that’s something neither 4G or hardwired plans can’t compete with.
Totally agree with you on the monthly bandwidth cap but that should get better overtime like everything else. My Beam plan is unlimited, if I could get the 40Mbps Beam connection for the price I”m paying for my 20Mbps I’d be satisfied for now until I can get unlimited 5G for 25 or 35KD a month.
How is Fasttelco with you Ismail?
I’m currently on Kems and they have been fine, but Qualitynet and Fasttelco have much better prices now.
Do you get a lot of service outages/issues (the dreaded underwater cable cut)? can they provide you with a static IP? Do they throttle bandwidth or do you see any degradation in service at times upload or download?
FT is fine in regards to service outages. Their fiber links stay connected for months, I believe local fiber outages are not the ISP’s fault but MOC. I have been lucky I suppose. FT does have higher latency than Qnet or Kems since they are routing through Qatar and not KSA/UAE.
Static IP is the default setup they provide. Never had issues with throttling while using http/https, I never use P2P so I can really help you out in that regard.
5ghz is a lot more unstable – if you are around a lot of other connections it does cut out a lot, and the range is typically weaker and worse around walls, different floors etc.
One thing the telcos have to be careful about is that though – internet speeds are now faster than many wifi routers at home. If you take a 5g hub and connect it to your old network chances are your actual network is slowing it down, and they don’t do a very good job of explaining that.
I completely agree with you on this. 5Ghz works for me because I’m in the same room as my router but with anybody else, they’ll most likely end up on the 2.4ghz connection and not enjoy the full potential of their 5G. I mean I consider myself a geek and couldn;t figure out why my connection was unstable. Maybe the routers should come set up with the 2 wifi frequencies separate, the 2.4ghz network be called Zain for example while the 5ghz network be called Zain 5G.
Hmmmmm.
Having now been here for two months and having civil ID and bank account, it’s finally time to move on from my half mbps landline internet which has been driving me nuts since I arrived 🙂
However, having looked at 5G there’s just no way I could persuade my wife to allow that monthly outlay. Hey – even I’d struggle to justify it!
So it’s paltry 4G for us, but I’m still worried as there seems to be no way to check what speed you’ll get in advance.
@Mark, I need to restart my router twice or thrice a day as well because the internet stops working all of a sudden. It’s a problem from Zain’s side.
If you don’t want to restart it, get into router settings, try turning the mobile data off, switch to 4G/3G, turn mobile data back on, and then switch to 5G.
Well, I’m shocked by Zain. I signed up for the bolt on a 20KD unlimited internet 12 month “special offer”.
I get around 4 – 5 mbps at home which is very poor and between about 5pm and 9pm it drops to around 450kpbs!
First time I spoke to them using the “English” option they told me they didn’t speak English. Second time they told me that I can’t expect it to work properly between 5 and 9pm as those are busy times. And I’m locked into a year’s contract.
At the end of the year, I certainly wont sign up with them again 🙁
I borrowed the bolt from a friend and I was getting around 4Mbps as well at my place. Same device would get me 60-90Mbps in the city. Really depends where you live. Best option for me at my place is 5G and Beam.
How can you split into 2 connections? I have the same problem with 5G
in the settings of the router under the wifi section
Hi mark,
I live in Salmiya in 14th Floor, I want to try Oreedo 5G, did you or any of your friends tried it? thanks.
Nope
Hi,
Do you know the setting to manually select 2.4 GHz or 5Ghz. I’m guessing I’m having the same issue as speeds vary between 60 to 250 mbps
For a Huawei 5G CPE PRO…its as below:
1. Click on “WIFI SETTINGS”….and uncheck’ 5Ghz preferred’.
2. Below it, make sure both ‘2.4 Ghz wifi’ and ‘5 Ghz wifi’ are turned ON with different SSID names. (can have the same password).
3. Click ‘Save’ and you are done.
4. On your mobile, scan for the new SSID which is on 5ghz and connect to it.
Regards,
Hi Mark
I have purchased the Zain 5G unlimited plan for 15KD monthly and the speed seems to average at 150-200 Mbps which is decent enough. But I am facing the same issue of internet drop once daily which leads me to reboot the router, did you manage to fix that ?
Since corona started speeds dropped to around 200-350Mbps for me
Hi Mark,
On my Zain 5G router have the same issue of internet drop once a day which leads me to reboot the device. Did you manage to find any fix for that ?
I had that issue with test unit but when I got my own device after i subscribed i no longer had that issue
hi aziz, did u fix the internet drop? and how
Hi Khaled,
I am using a second router for Wi-Fi, this is connected with LAN to the Zain Router. Since I am from IT background I was doing some troubleshooting and found the cause of 5G to hang because of IPv6 DHCP requests from my 2nd router. After disabling that I was able to fix the daily connection issues. But then I still need to restart the router every 2 weeks or so (which is acceptable for me), I guess that is inevitable when using wireless connections like 4G/5G.
Hi Mark,
I just got zain 5G mifi and I’m experiencing throttling on youtube and PlayStation.
On youtube the speed is 5mbps and on PlayStation its 3mbps.
There is no throttling if I use VPN for youtube.
Did you encounter any throttling?