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Information Internet Kuwait

More information on WiMD

Someone from WiMD the new internet provider I posted about earlier in the day left the following comment:

Many thanks, first of all, for giving us a platform to voice our services.

First things first, WiMD stands for Wireless Mobile Data. The name implies the meaning, so no gimmickry with names and how strong and powerful we are. Our technology is not based on the WiMAX standard and we don’t believe in sharing the customer subscribed bandwidth. We have nation wide coverage for our residential customers as of today.

Having said the above, we pride ourselves in what we commit to our customers. In today’s age of blogs and forums, we are aware that customer satisfaction is of prime importance and any wrong information/commitment can only do more harm to us than good.

As most of your readers have mentioned, they have never heard of us. This is true as we didn’t launch or market our services in the residential domain before today. All our existing residential customers till date have been through word of mouth and personal referrals. For obvious reasons you don’t get recommended for bad service or performance, do you?

We don’t want to take any further space and just want to introduce ourselves us a healthy alternative to your existing miseries with limited bandwidth and slower speed. Our request to all is, don’t judge us without even trying us. Our company policy for bandwidth commitment to customers is based on the site survey we do before delivering our services. Fair and transparent. Our NOC and Helpdesk are equipped to answer your queries.

And even after this, if your satisfaction quotient is not reached, kind reminder to our existing and prospective customers. We have a fair money bank policy which means, if you are dissatisfied with our services, you get the remaining balance on your contract reimbursed upon cancellation.

Just want to remind your readers, we are in Hall 6 @ InfoConnect. Please feel free to drop by.

We mean business and that is what we are here for. So no strings attached, no hidden dramas. JUST PERFORMANCE.

No idea on the price but one reader mentioned they start from KD385 per year.

Update: Here are their prices per year

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

Update2: I’m going to be trying out and signing up for their service. First hurdle is to see if I can install the antenna on my balcony instead of the roof since I don’t have access to my buildings roof. Hopefully the balcony would work, I’ll find out on Saturday.

63 replies on “More information on WiMD”

I wonder what their download limit will be?
I wonder will they claim high speed transfers rates (like all the current providers) that can only be achieved if only one user is online at a time!

If the offer good service I’ll sign up my current providers (2 required to over come the data limits) are on a month to month policy I refuse to do a 1 year anymore because they like to change their policies when they have you locked into a one year contract. shame on you w,z,v,q nets…

Yep! Wataniya changed the download limit on my 1 year contract without even an email telling me they were doing it. And their speeds have seemed to slow down quite a bit in the last couple months.

These guys were the only new thing happening at this year’s Infoconnect.. Was so damn depressing seeing everyone super old tech from last year..

I thought that these guys were a wee bit expensive.. but maybe that’s just me.. Even thought what they are offering is a pretty amazing service..
These are the prices I got from their pamphlet..

6 Mbps – 325
7 Mbps – 355
8 Mbps – 390
9 Mbps – 473
10 Mbps – 523
11 Mbps – 590
12 Mbps – 660
13 Mbps – 730
14 Mbps – 800
15 Mbps – 870
16 Mbps – 940
17 Mbps – 1010
18 Mbps – 1080
19 Mbps – 1150
20 Mbps – 1220

Well, abroad my friend gets 20MB for 120 KD per year, so it’s definitely a rip-off. Then again Kuwait has a long way to go in that department.

I’d be willing to pay up to 550KD a year perhaps for 20BM, but 1,220KD is absurd.

Yes, its a shame, the money is there (billions in surplus), there is no excuse for bad infrastructure in a country small as kuwait and as rich as kuwait, and i say this as a kuwaiti youth 🙁

true shame…

For the benefit of your readers, please find below our annual residential prices.

We don’t have any download limits or caps whatsoever.

Mb Price(KD)
1 130.00
1.5 150.00
2 180.00
3 225.00
4 270.00
5 320.00
6 325.00
7 355.00
8 390.00
9 473.00
10 523.00
11 590.00
12 660.00
13 730.00
14 800.00
15 870.00
16 940.00
17 1,010.00
18 1,080.00
19 1,150.00
20 1,220.00

Hmm… do they have coverage in areas with slow land connections? I use a Zain router but the limit is getting annoying.

The service seems to be groundbreaking here in Kuwait. I understand you guys are trying to cut setup costs but the prices are still ridiculous for the speeds that you provide.

I like the fact that they took the time to email you back in regards to their reputation and brand. This is great! It shows they actually care about their reputation and customers. “So no strings attached, no hidden dramas. JUST PERFORMANCE.” is a big promise, especially when companies get really big. I’m not saying they can’t do it, I just hope they keep at this attitude. My hat’s off to you guys!

Okay I just got off the phone with one of their representatives, and apparently they have to install an Antenna on top of your house, not sure how it would work in Apartment complexes. As to how you connect to that antenna, the rep seemed kind of confused as she said you connect to the antenna wirelessly, yet you are required to get a router, I asked about if I already have a router and she said it should work, I have never heard of routers getting their connection wirelessly so I assume there has to be a wired connection from the Antenna to the router which might be difficult for some houses without having the need to drill a hole in the wall.

Also for those asking whether their area is covered or not, their website has a map on it, here is the link.

https://wimd.com.kw/services/infrastructure-coverage/

If this is the case then I don’t see how they can be competitive. There’s no way I will be allowed to put an antenna on top of my villa.

Regarding the prices, I wouldn’t mind paying provided those speeds are GUARANTEED and not ‘up to’ speeds. Also, has anyone heard about the upload speeds?

I just read in the other post they are claiming 1:1 for upload and download. That’s amazing for WiFi Internet.

yeah, I appreciate the fresh competition, but sadly the prices aren’t that competitive.

2MB DSL costs KD 128/year vs 180 KD/year with WiMD
must be some performance miracle to justify the extra 52KD

Newcomers should offer more competitive prices considering they are the underdogs..

I think this is a good offer for people who wants high speed and their line cant handle that speed !

Like me living in adan block 2 which is sucks ( max speed 128kbps DSL ) lol

Mr.Yakoub, you are absolutely correct. As we mentioned in our introductory post, we are a healthy alternative for people suffering from limited bandwidth and speed due to limitations on their telephone line’s. mainly for upload as the maximum capacity on ADSL2+ is 3.5 Mbps provided you are within 2-3 kms of the telephone exchange of your area. So, if you’re staying within 2 kms of your telephone exchange the maximum capacity you can get is 20 odd Mbps..if you are lucky and 3 MB upload.

WiMD removes the copper telephone line from the picture and hence the discrepancy of download versus upload ratio. It’s not that the other ISPs don’t want to sell 1:1 bandwidth, just the fact that ADSL technology doesn’t support it.

We provide the ‘last mile’ as it’s called in the Telecom jargon I.e.from the exchange to the customer over wireless which doesn’t suffer from the download upload discrepancy. It’s the evolution of technology and Physics related stuff, not some rabbit out of the hat gimmick.

Hope to have given a fair insight to our deployment procedure, and by the way We don’t have any download limit or Fair usage policy gimmick tagged along. Service comes with a one time installation fee of 25Kd. Buying the broadband router from us or otherwise is customers discretion and YES our download and upload speed are same.

So if i buy 10Mb i get 1.28MB/sec down/up for 60sec/minute 60minute/hr 24hrs a day and 365 days a year?

I’ll be able to burst ~3200GB per month? are you sure???

Respected Mr. Kuwaity. We don’t have a Fair usage policy or download capping, but we do we have an ABUSE policy and what you have mentioned in your post qualifies as an abuse of any network anywhere in the world.

Humor apart, we need to inform you what ISP’s don’t want residential customers to know. Across the globe, any ISP sell their residential bandwidth at a contention ratio upon their discretion. It can be any ratio ranging from 10:1 to 100:1 i.e. in layman terms companies while doing their strategy for Residential users presume that not all users are going to be online at the same time and hence the usage by the customers can be technically manipulated on existing up links to the outside world. So if any ISP sees that one single customer is hogging the bandwidth depriving others, the abuse policy comes into action.

Having said that, different companies might have different alarm bells for this kind of excess usage of bandwidth. So, if any ISP tells you, YES you can download as much as you want, you have paid for it, are deceiving you and that’s not what we do.

We believe in the customer taking an informed decision rather than one taken based on a bunch of fine print terms and conditions which he/she doesn’t read ever.

Hope to have answered your query.

We provide an Ethernet Cable with a RJ45 connector which goes in the Internet Port of your Broadband Router.

The Router should be configured to accept DHCP IP and we are done.

But if the antenna is installed on the roof, how do you bring that connection inside to the router? Do you follow other cables running inside the building? For example, satellite or maybe phone lines?

so how much do i get for what i paid for out of that 3200GB per month?

if i was on 10:1 then thats 320GB which actually a 1Mbps gives?

Ok…all of this is great but I believe if I could use one subscription for ALL my devices (Laptop, Mobile, Handheld such as iPad and desktop at home) anywhere at anytime without having to pay for home DSL, 3G, hotspots ets that would be the kick….and trust me I would invest in one subscription with a higher speed rather than paying for muliples with lower speed……is that the case in WIMD?

Referring to Kuwaity, the contention ratio opted by ISP’s is a strict non disclosure item. Apologies for the same.

Having said that, another query from a reader was about the path followed by the cable installed on the roof. We have professional teams of field technician to execute the cabling in residential bldgs. The route used for satellite and telephone lines can be a good heads up for our teams in high rise apartments.

For some readers, accessing the roof is an issue. In such cases, we have deployed the device in the balconies from where our Base Stations have a line of sight. Again, it’s subject to a technical site survey which we keep mentioning.

We would like to remind readers that people normally mix bandwidth capacity with speed. In essence both are different entities all together.

When you subscribe with an ISP for say 2Mb, you are leasing a capacity of 2Mb. This capacity can be utilized to download from a single source from the Internet or multiple. How much the source allows you to pull out of its infrastructure is their discretion. Some websites like Download.com, if they allow worldwide customers to freely squeeze software out of their servers, we are sure their network will crash like nine pins.

So, web servers/file servers of these companies do something called as throttling, which limits the download limit of each connection to their infrastructure. So, the best measure of your capacity would be downloading multiple sessions or downloading torrents with high seeds or websites which have the infrastructure to handle magnanimous amount of traffic. Ubuntu.com is one such website.

Da Keem mentioned, if one connection can suffice the need of his home. Well, if your indoor Wi-Fi is killer grade, with minimal dark spots in your house, our high capacity connection will do the job ‘Five ways from Sunday’ as they!!!

WiMD at the moment has introduced this deployment strategy for residential customers. We are working on simplifying the mode of delivering our services to our residential end user and soon, even people not having access to their roof can avail our services.

We would like to reiterate, we are not competing in price or quality with others. We have our own benchmark for quality and standard. Readers raising an eyebrow about the prices, We would like to humbly comment that good quality always has a specific price tag. Some agree to it, most don’t.

It’s a matter of convincing yourself, does this deserve my hard earned money? If the answer is Yes, we are just a phone call away!!

Throttleing does not occure with Speedtest.net. If you guarantee 10MBPs but only get 1 MBPs with speedtest, assuming you have tried several different servers/locations, then your claim is false. I use FIOS in the US. They claim 50MBPs and I get 50MBPs. Every single time! From what else I read over your posts, you’re really no different than any other ISP except that you have very few customers right now and can make outlandish claims because you have no bunching yet. I’m not saying that you aren’t a good service here, but I am saying you are just another ISP. Nothing special except your price.

@Rehab: It’s not for us to claim we are better than Mada or otherwise. It’s the customer’s verdict that eventually counts.

From a Technology perspective, we believe MADA uses WiMAX for their wireless deployment. If you can take some time out and read about WiMAX and its the shared bandwidth architecture, it will give you a better insight to the technology.

As for us, we use a proprietary technology developed by our Wireless Vendor using Point to Multipoint methodology to deliver high capacity bandwidth over long distance.

We are mostly sought after by customers who need stable broadband connectivity in the far off chalets in Bnaider, Zor, Umm Al Haiman etc.

Wouldn’t it be great if you can get 10Mb of stable net connectivity in your chalet, playing your favorite online games!!

Well in that case, I need to wIt for Mark review.

Some users claimed they get stable 250+ kbps download on their 2mb Mada xenon stick i.e 10 kd per month.

If you got bettet price offer or better speed then i would definately switch towards you. At the end we are rational customer.

today wimd team tryed to install the antenna, they confirmed signal is ok, when i test the internet speed test with servers in Europe and us it was giving me less than 1 mbps, but the guy tryed to be smart and making a test with their local server, thats mean its a fake test, because its not testing the internet speed, it will test the speed with their local network, i was not satisfied with this service and the company promised me to refund next week,

be careful from the fake testing guys

That is not a fake test. Every company does that. If you really wanted to test it, you should have tried to download from Ubuntu. You don’t expect servers in Europe to give you the full download speed, do you?

europe, us, asia any mirror located overseas , it was giving me lower speed .. it is a fake testing to check local site, if this is the case , i can have local network connected to the internet using dialup, to check the speed of connection i will test download a file from my network , i will get speed 100 mbps ! does that mean our internet speed is 100 mbps?
@q82011

As previously stated, you can be throttled from other sites. Just cuz you get 2Mbps doesn’t mean any site will allow you that same speed. That’s why I suggested downloading from Ubuntu.com or even doing a test from speedtest.net It doesn’t surprise me that your speeds were slower than their test but it shouldn’t be that much of a difference. What speed did you buy?

Common 🙂 Tell me website which is not allow 2 Mbps connection. Most of all modern websites provides 100Mbps+ speed if your ISP gives you connection like this.

BTW I agree about Ubuntu. If you want get real speed you must use very popular websites. I personally always using torrent files with more than 500 seeder for check real speed.

using torrents with 500 seeds thats mean you are merging the parallel speed as serial speed which is totaly wrong for example you have 8 pipes with capacity 100 thats doesnt mean your speed is 800 (8×100), if you want to check your real speed always trust the serial method because in sequence you will calculate your speed 😉

Lol 😀 I’m checking speed by torrents because I need speed for torrents and even if I’m downloading file from web without torrent, I always using download accelerator with multiple connection for this. So I don’t care about single connection speed because even if it’s 256Kbps, this is pretty enough for surfing in web 🙂

cool we agreed that i should able to use the full bandwidth of my connection to download from the internet as this is not happened in my case

They are no different from any other ISP in Kuwait that I can tell. Their “150 customers with no complaints” stems from, I would bet, a handpicked group of people that they have ideal locations for reception. If I guarantee a hot, fresh pizza delivered to your door, but only if you live 5 minutes from my shop, it isn’t much of a guarantee for everyone else!!

We would again like to remind all, exact bandwidth can be committed only after a technical site survey is done. In most cases, if the line of sight is satisfactory we install the device and deliver the service on the spot. If ur residential location has an issue our technician will proactively inform you about it and it’s your discretion you want to continue with the available bandwidth with service credit adjustments from us or cancel.

Please be informed every representative will always sell you with the statement that this is what your location can get but exact bandwidth will only be ascertain once our team comes onsite.

Regarding fake testing, we mentioned in our previous posts, we are selling you capacity. It can be accurately tested by having multiple sessions of download and adding up the end results rather than trying to squeeze from a single site and concluding that your subscribed bandwidth is not met.

Any ISP in the world can only commit to the bandwidth it delivers from it’s infrastructure to the customer I.e. last mile in Telecom jargon …how much the customer gets from each server in the world is not in the ISPs control. If from a specific server you get 2Mb and you have 4 Mb, you can test by opening another session to the same server and you’ll find out that since your capacity subscribed with your ISP is 4 Mb you are able to get 2 sessions of 2Mb each from that server.

If any ISP still commits that no matter any server in the world you try to. download, you will get 4 Mb in a single session coz you subscribed 4 Mb with them are deceiving the customers.

We believe in educating the customer and having them take the decision. Not by deceit and lies.

Dear Wimd Management,
when i subscribe with internet speed 2.0 MBPS i am expecting 2.0 mbps for the internet not to connect to your infrastructure only!! (Local Connection).

my subscription with my DSL didn’t finish yet, when i am testing the speedtest.net from London (Namsco) from my DSL its giving me 2.0 MBPS, but from WIMD it gave 0.9 MBPS

thats mean the source is weak!! because we test 1 destination in the same time and both sources located in the same area!

i can have a local network at my home connecting between two PC’s throw a LAN, when i will have a test i will get 100 MBPS but does that mean my internet connection is 100 mbps? of course not

its good to educate your customer you are guarantee the speed to your infrastructure but you are not guaranteed he will receive internet speed based on his agreement

Regards

Dear q80 We would like to remind you about our previous post. Nobody from WiMD will sell you your bandwidth and guarantee it sitting in the booth at InfoConnect.

We keep reiterating, our rep can just from experience hint at what your location is capable of, but the actual bandwidth can only be ascertained at the time of deployment.

Did u try downloading from other sites as well or just concluding based on 1 download session. All ISPs have different upstream providers to take them out of Kuwait. So for a certain server we might have better routes thus speed while other’s can have better routes than us for xyz sites.

What we guarantee is your capacity subscribed with us.It might come from a single session or from multiple. The internet is governed by lot more complicated factors than just simple speed test results.

But what we can put our money on is that you will have your subscribed bandwidth, it’s just a matter of testing it properly and getting convinced.

We don’t want to incept ideas in anyone’s mind luring them into our service. Even before InfoConnect we had 150 odd residential customers for more than 6 months

We don’t want to incept ideas in anyone’s mind luring them into our service. Even before InfoConnect we had 150 odd residential customers for more than 6 months without any major complaints or talk about disconnecting.

Technology like ours always has takers, by bringing it to InfoConnect we wanted to negate the niche and make it more accessible to regular users. But as they say Customer is always right and we humbly accept it.

Of course there wouldn’t be any complaints, because they’re just 150 customers 😛

Wait until thousands subscribe and the high latency,low DL/UL drama will start (Hope not).

@q8groups and q80: if you guys have an issue with the service please give us an opportunity to rectify the flaw if any and address your observations by sending a senior staff from our technical team. If you’ll are still not satisfied, your money will be duly refunded.

I requested a site survey and it looks like it’ll be done sometime next week. I’ll post my results after the survey

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