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First Impression Geek Internet Kuwait

First Impression: WiMD Internet

Last week I posted about a new internet provider that I found out about. Turns out they aren’t really new and have been in business for some time now but they were catering mostly to companies and certain individuals until they decided to expand their presence and showed up at InfoConnect for the first time this year. I was looking for a new internet provider myself so I got in touch with them and they came over yesterday to install it.

The internet provider is called WiMD which stands for Wireless Mobile Data. They provide you (obviously) with wireless internet to your home using the 5 GHz wavelength which is kinda similar to a wifi connection except it can transmit a lot further (in theory around 70km I think). To setup their connection you require the installation of a small white box that needs to be pointed to one of their towers. This is probably the most difficult and complicated part since the box needs a direct line of sight to their towers. If you’re living in an area like Salwa, Mishref or Bayan where all the buildings are low then you won’t have a problem. But, if like me you live in an area where you’re surrounded by tall apartment buildings and in my case Salmiya, then you’ll most likely NOT be able to get a direct line of sight. But I got lucky.

When they came over they tried installing the box on one of my balconies but it wouldn’t work. One balcony had tall buildings blocking my line of sight to their Hawalli tower while the other balcony wasn’t pointing towards their Ras Salmiya tower. Since the box is tiny I managed to get permission from my building to install it on the roof specially since we were just going to connect it to an existing pipe. Once we got onto the roof we were able to see their Salmiya tower (which is the communications/post office building near Salmiya Coop) and get a strong connection.

The white box is small and light and can be connected to any existing post on top of your building. You then need to run an Ethernet cable from the box down to your apartment and to your router or directly to your computer. There are two different connection speeds you need to know about. The first is the actual connection speed from your apartment to their tower. In my case the connection speed was around 15Mbps. The second connection speed is the one you subscribe to. So say you have a 15Mbps connection to their tower but you subscribe to their 1Mbps internet connection then you get just a 1Mbps internet connection. WiMD uses internet providers like Fasttelco, Zajil etc.. to provide their customers with internet. That is a good thing because it means if one internet provider is congested or having problems their system is smart enough to shift the balance over to the rest of their providers.

Right now I think they have my connection speed unlimited, so I’m getting internet as fast as my connection to their tower can handle. I’ve provided some speed test results below but really they do not do justice to the connection. Ignore the numbers below because in real world use the connection is super fast. Regular browsing which is what I do 90% of the time is very quick with instant page loads and no sort of lag whatsoever. Downloading files varies, I was downloading the 1.3GB Lion update from Apple at around 300kbps but that’s because I had one session open and it’s probably a limit by Apple. By using the software SpeedDownload I opened up a number of sessions and hit 1.2MB/s. I downloaded torrents as well and the accumulated speed of all my torrents was around 2.85MB/s! That’s by far the fastest I’ve ever downloaded torrents. Whats even better is the fact that while my torrents were downloading at that speed I was still browsing as usually not noticing any slowness. Their upload speed is also faster then anything I’ve ever had before.

I had my brother who lives next door and connected to my network try out gaming online and this is what he emailed me back:

The connection is f****** amazing. I always had trouble playing Halo but with this new connection there’s zero lag at all. Literally, no lag. I would have trouble connecting to games, no trouble here. Pretty cool

and later

I just tried FIFA, another game I had issues with, worked really well.

So first impressions, this connection kicks ass. Now I just need to figure out what speed to subscribe to. Originally I was thinking 6Mbps, then moved up to 10 and now really want to go even faster but once you go higher their connection isn’t exactly cheap. Below are their yearly prices again in case you missed my previous post:

1Mb KD130
1.5Mb KD150
2Mb KD180
3Mb KD225
4Mb KD270
5Mb KD320
6Mb KD325
7Mb KD355
8Mb KD390
9Mb KD473
10Mb KD523
11Mb KD590
12Mb KD660
13Mb KD730
14Mb KD800
15Mb KD870
16Mb KD940
17Mb KD1,010
18Mb KD1,080
19Mb KD1,150
20Mb KD1,220

If you’re interested in a connection you can call them on 22475841 and 22475842 or visit their website [Here]

84 replies on “First Impression: WiMD Internet”

Does anyone know the price difference between this and the providers like Zain, Wataniya, VIVA? What speeds do they provide for what price?

This connection simply kicks ass comparing to all providers in Kuwait, simply kicks ass, period ass kicking in the nuts.

i got my 1 year 6mbps and at night x4 for like 400-600 from fastelco i cant remember i know from 200 gap is big but idk ill check with bro and reply back in an hour or so

If you have a small house then my guess is you are in a low rise area like salwa, bayan etc.. In that case you don’t have a problem because the tower is higher than all the buildings around you.

But if you live in an area like Salmiya where its full of tall buildings then its more likely you have a building in your way blocking your line of sight.

When you call them they send someone over to see if you can get a connection or not and then tell you what speed you will get.

Hey, just to follow up on this, I just received this form Wimd:

“We have checked your location on Bayan and we don’t have coverage there
We are going to install new tower in Mishref and it will cover Bayan”

I’ve used all the over the air products and this one sounds promising. The fact that they use multiple ISPs to supply their customers is an interesting concept.
Did you by chance try the American tv programming they advertise? I’m curious how well that works: any lag, constant buffering, tv selection, etc.

Why does this seem very similar to Mada but a lot more expensive? they also have their antennas above the CO-OP supermarkets and you should have Mada close to a window or so.. Mada speed goes up to 6+ Mb/s if you live in one of their green areas which will cost you 240KD annually, and these guys are offering you somewhat close to that speed for 325KD annually. I’d try Mada before going to WiMD.

We had Mada, which was very inconsistent imo, upload speeds are also much slower on Mada. I couldn’t play online with Mada because of that, there would be a lot of lag, or it just wouldn’t connect properly.

And this is supposed to be a guaranteed speed. Mada will support 2Mb and up but won’t guarantee anything better than 2Mb. And as Patrick stated, Mada or any other ISP will give you 1:1 for upload and download.

Well I have Mada right now and although I didn’t have issues downloading torrents with it at night while I was asleep, I was still using my DSL connection to do all my browsing the past couple of months. When I first got Mada it was great but it seems they’ve over subscribed because the connection I have today is not the same as when I first subscribed. But even at their best the upload speed was always around 256-512kb. With WiMD upload speed is like 5MB.

Right now WiMD seems super fast but I’m not sure it’s going to remain like this 6month or 12 months down the line once new subscribers join. But I was actually so impressed that I’m going to be replacing my current setup of Mada + Qualitynet for WiMD. I figured the 30-40kd I’m paying for those two I could get a 10Mbps from WiMD.

@ O

did u see that upload speed and MS-Ping Mada is no where near that >.<"

now i hope your brother try's it out on more game's like BF3 on pc or something 😛 that would be just amazing ;p

Battlefield 3 on the 360 was the only game I could really play online, there’d be some lag once in a while, but it was pretty playable. I tested this connection with Halo & FIFA in particular because those two games were nearly impossible to play with Mada.

What I need to know is whether the connection is constant or not, mark if you test on the Kuwaiti speed test server that you did on this post, do you constantly get that speed like you would on a deal connection or does it vary every time? If so by how much?

I am cuurently with Zain, and my biggest problem is the download cap. I was thinking of moving to media this week, for not having any cap. What do you guys suggest?

Does WIMD have a download cap?

Also mada promotes on having 10 mbps, would that equal 10 mb on Wimd, thats an additional 20kd per month compared to mada.

yeah 10Mbps by Mada would equal 10Mbps by WiMD download wise. But you also need to consider the upload speed, the latency and the fact that which one of these companies will guarantee you 10Mbps. Mada is up to 10Mbps and guarantees 2Mbps, WiMD guarantees 10Mbps or whatever speed you subscribe with them for.

That’s awesome! I can’t wait till they come back to do a site test. Last year when I was about to subscribe they had only one tower which was in Sabah Al Salem and none in my area Mubarak Al Kabeer hence I couldn’t get any signal. I am hoping that since they rolled out more coverage around Kuwait I would get a better signal.

I am not sure if it will get screwed up eventually with more subscribers since they are offerring you something else. A dedicated speed more or less.

But that’s awesome!

In the UK I have a 10MB connection for 27 pounds a month … internet in Kuwait is absolutely rediculous … a friend of mine has 24 MB connection for 60 pounds a month … Kuwait internet is a rip off

apples and oranges 🙂 internet isn’t a natural resource, it just needs the right infrastructure–something Kuwait is perhaps lacking.

I have electric heating part of the electric bill .. roughly 120 pounds every 2 months… still works cheaper than kuwait! ;/

Guess what… they have an excellent public transport system … that I don’t even have to buy a car!! … just admit it’s overpriced and stop being bias!!

Again how much do the irish pay for petrol? How much do you pay in taxes? How much does rent cost?

You can’t haven’t everything you want in one location. You’ve got cheap internet true but you’re also paying 20% tax on everything you buy. You win one you lose one…

The overwhelming response we got from InfoConnect was most welcome for us. Considering the same, we have already started the process of upgrading our bandwidths with our partner ISP’s and by the end of the week, we should have a big pool of primary and redundant bandwidth available.

We look forward to having constructive feedback’s from our existing customers so we can be proactive in our actions rather than reactive. We believe in having a fair foresight in our infrastructure development and up gradation avoiding unwanted service degradation.

Our development team is motivated and aware that we don’t reach a point where the infrastructure cannot commit to the customer base and performance takes a beating.

I sure hope so, thats the only thing I am currently skeptical about, is since you guys are buying bandwidth from ISP’s, will you always ensure you have enough to be able to provide people with 15MB connections, because if it was me or anyone else I know, they will be opting for the higher speeds otherwise they would just go for DSL or any other cheaper alternative.

Dear BAJS, apart from the 4 licensed ISP’s in Kuwait i.e. Qnet, Fast Telco, Zajil and Gulfnet, no other company is allowed access to international links. So, all the 3G operators and companies like our self have to avail the bandwidth from them.

How we bifurcate our customer traffic on our partners and the traffic engineering we do with the bandwidths at our disposal makes the difference.

Alright thanks for the reply, I will wait until my current DSL subscription ends, hopefully by then I will be certain that WiMD is right for me.

Mark, It looks like the antenna they install is roughly the same size as the Mada router. Is that true? I need to convince the landlord how small this antenna is so I can get internet to our villa.

I am seriously considering subscribing to WIMD as my current internet provider is very inconsistent, it is fast early(200-300 kb/s torrent download speed) in the morning and is extremely slow at night(30-40 kb/s)Which speed should i subscribe to in order to achieve a download speed of 300+ kb/s.
Also i would like to ask why the prices are higher than the standard DSL providers, for example;a standard 5mb DSL connection would cost me 267 KD, however with WIMD it would cost me 320 KD. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Over the air internet is almost always more expensive than DSL. DSL has been around for decades, uses old and new wires (copper and fiber), and is cheaper to implement. Over the air internet is relatively newer and doesn’t have the infrastructure when compared to DSL. For example, they have to put up new towers, testing, installation, etc. Most of that has already occurred with DSL setups.

Dear q82011.. you seem to be very well informed about technology life cycles n so on.

Very true what you’ve mentioned. DSL infrastructure is comparatively less expensive than Wireless as it involves MoC rental charges for using their radio towers which are very dearer compared to DSL.Not to mention the devices n licenses also play an important role.

Having said that, technology evolves and gets affordable in due course of time. In few year’s time outdoor Broadband Wireless communication will be a given as is Wifi for indoors.

Computers are my life. I would probably go crazy without them!
I have contacted someone about a survey and anxiously await for their call so I can test this out for myself.

I wonder what kind of security they are using. I wonder how hard it would be for somebody to configure a 5Ghz antenna to listen for WiMD traffic.

Also, what about bad weather? Will this still work since sand is an insulator?

Hey Mark, You mentioned in your post that you’re having unlimited connection speed for now. So is it for anyone who buys right now to have an unlimited connection speed or is it just for you ?

If Central Bank of Kuwait can trust our infrastructure, using us for their Data connectivity between 3 sites, I feel our customers should consider themselves in good hand’s as far as security is concerned.

As for climatic conditions are concerned, its industrial grade hardware capable to withstand heavy rain’s, dust storms and snow.For customers who are located more than 10 kms from our Base Station, 80% Humidity or more marginally reduces throughput. But thats Physics we are dealing with and vendors can only try a work around solution for.

If readers go through all our posts till date, one will realize how much information we passed onto the end user related to how ISP’s work and technical know how.

Reiterating the fact that don’t believe us blindly. We don’t have any hoax claims to make or magic stories to tell. We have introduced a proven technology in Kuwait and it’s just matter of time people get convinced that Wireless is dependable and can deliver handsomely.

Yes Ali, we have the licenses for the 2.3Ghz, 2.4 Ghz outdoor and 5.4 Ghz to 5.85 Ghz spectrum from MoC Kuwait

Speediest is never accurate …. Can be congestion on the server end and can easily be manipulate by ISPs. I think the best way to test links is by video streaming and provides an accurate measure of the actual bandwidth of the link … Also ISPs can not easily maniputle those sessions .

What shitty weather? You mean the 10 days that it actually rains or when there’s a sandstorm? Or are you referring to the 287 days of sunny, clear skies and blazing hot weather? I guess that would be cause for concern.

I have one question does anybody have this service in a house in Adan (coverage)? If yes, how was the installation of the lan cable to to router. Did they dangle a cable outside the building and drill a hole in the window frame in keeping with 3rd world standards.

The only reason WIMD is getting such a large surge of business is because service from current provides is so bad! They promise you everything and deliver none of what they promise. I currently pay monthly with Viva and W-net waiting to jump ship. Yes 2 providers is necessary to receive almost mediocre to poor service.

I enjoy paying at the airport (parking available) and while waiting try and to a speed test on their computer at their office with their service, funny the computers are never connected to the internet located right next to the big advertisement 21.1 MPS….. Oh for fun ask them if they can hook up the computer so you can test the service, I think they have more excuses than disgusted customers…

I just wonder if I sign up and WIMD pulls a Viva on me can I cancel without a huge penalty?

Does anyone know if they have the entire country covered? Is this available in Mahaboula and Fahaheel? I’d be willing to pay the higher price for a consistant internet speed. Watiniya has gotten better, but when I want to use it most, around 7 PM, it slows to the point of being useless.
Thanks for keeping us up to date with this information.

The latency is which intrigues me. I’m with KEMS right now and getting about 170ms at the best of times to London and keeping in mind that is with nagles algorithm disabled. An extra 50ms off that would be great.
Why is it we have to put up with these terrible pings in Kuwait? DSL connections ping locally at around 20-30 so WiMDs is loses locally but still able to provide a better ping to London than any other ISP I have tried.
If WiMD can offer 119ms to London with wireless technology why can’t the other DSL ISPs in Kuwait even come close to matching it?

Have heard that the frequencies emitted by these devices have an adverse effect on pregnant ladies , small kids as well as on unborn child……so guys beware !!!

Then don’t use mobile phones which is having Wifi, Even laptops, Wireless house phones! and btw the Antenna is on the roof!

I live infront of the tower, I’m guessing it’s the one over Geanr. My room faces the tower directly with nothing in between. So I should get high speeds. So I should try it out, but do they have any setting up fees or is it included in the annual fee?

thts not my real name XD, anyways never ever get spacelink or qnet i paid for 8 mb 470 KD and what do i get: ping 36 ms, download speed 0.38 mbps, upload speed 0.32 mbps, i paid 470 for 8 and i get this rubbish and lets not mention how much i paid for all the extra rubbish tht they said was the problem, oh ill just add it wasn’t my pc i formatted it 7 times, and even installed windows 7 and every time they just give me a new reason, the 1st 3 months was what i paid 4, but now XDDDD the r just a big scam!!!!!

What is the latest on this ISP? Also, is there a newer, better one to come out lately. I have Mada and can’t wait to get rid of them.

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