Search: “fasttelco”

At the office I am on a 512kb Fasttelco connection. At home I am on a 512kb Qualitynet connection. I ran a bandwidth test at both locations and the following were the results:

Qualitynet
Communications: 475.4 kilobits per second
Storage: 58 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 17.6 seconds
Subjective rating: Not Bad

Fasttelco
Communications 362.5 kilobits per second
Storage: 44.3 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 23.1 seconds
Subjective rating: Not Bad

In both trials, no one but me was using the connection on the network.

Winner of Round 1: Qualitynet

Around a month ago Zain sent over a 5G router for me to test out at home. I’ve already posted a first and second impression post and now after trying out the device for a full month, I’m convinced it’s a must-have connection. There isn’t anything faster right now on the market, not even close.

Clearly 5G is super fast but there are two important questions that need to be answered here:

1) Do you really need 5G speeds?

No, I don’t think so, I don’t think the majority of people need 5G speeds, I personally don’t. Someone left a comment the other day under my iPhone 11 Pro post saying it sucks that the new iPhone doesn’t have 5G, and I have to ask, why would you need 5G speeds on your phone? On my home computers, I rarely download torrents anymore which is where I can see speeds of 500 or 700Mbps making the biggest difference and maybe for downloading a new videogame on my PS4 every now and then or a software update but that’s really it. For normal use 100Mbps would be more than enough. The reason I see the need for 5G is because not everyone can get a fiber connection at home and rarely anyone gets decent LTE speeds at home, so 5G is really the only other option.

When I tried downloading a torrent file over 5G, I hit speeds of around 10MB/s and I ended up downloading a 5GB file in around 7 minutes. 5G is so fast that it might have taken me longer to copy a 5GB file off my home server to my Mac. There is a wow factor when downloading large apps or PS4 updates and you see the progress bar fill up so quickly. 5G is so fast its stupid funny, and in my case where just until a few months ago the fastest connection I could get at home was 10Mbps, jumping up to 700Mbps is a HUGE difference.

So no, I don’t think anyone really needs full 5G speeds for normal use, but for the majority of people, 5G is the only way to crack the 100Mbps barrier at home.

2) Is it expensive?

I know a lot of people might disagree with me here but I don’t think 5G is expensive. If you compare 5G to fiber prices or how much I’m paying for Zain Beam, you’ll quickly realize the amount you’re paying for the speed you’re getting is actually great deal. Here is a quick comparison:

Zain Beam 20Mbps: KD25/m (unlimited bandwidth)
Fasttelco Fiber 50Mbps: KD35/m (unlimited bandwidth)
Qualitynet Fiber 100Mbps: KD32/m (unlimited bandwidth)
Zain 5G (500Mbps+): KD45/m (1TB bandwidth)

I think what really makes 5G seem expensive is the limited bandwidth. Optimally the minimum you would want is 1TB per month. I just checked my usage and from September 12 up to September 30, I consumed around 320GB of bandwidth which is a lot less than I was expecting so 1TB would work out just fine for my needs. If you download tons of PS4 or Xbox games, you’ll probably want more than 1TB and the next step up is a whopping KD65 for 1.8TB.

In conclusion, I want 5G at home even though I just signed up to Zain Beam a few months back. I did ask a Zain employee if I could “upgrade” from Beam to 5G and was told I could without any penalties so that’s good news. I am worried that once 5G becomes a lot more common the speeds would drop, but even if it drops to say 300Mbps I’d still be happy with it. If you haven’t checked out my previous posts on 5G here are the links:

First Impression: Zain 5G in Salmiya
Second Impression: Zain 5G in Salmiya

Also, here is the link to the Zain 5G website.

update: I was just informed that you can’t upgrade from Zain Beam to 5G so I updated my post to reflect that.

There is an interesting discussion in the 248AM Community regarding internet latency in Kuwait. Internet latency is how much time it takes for a packet of data to get from one point to another so for example, from your computer to the website you’re trying to access. When browsing the web though, latency isn’t that important, but when playing video games, latency can make a world of a the difference in gameplay. A FASTtelco employee left some information regarding local internet latency in the discussion which I thought would be interesting to share, so I’ve copied and pasted it below with some minor changes:

—————————————————

In order the get the best latency, first we have to understand the dependencies and the major elements which might effect your latency:

First, the ISP’s are contracted with international providers either by dry routes (land) or through the wet routes (sea). Sometimes it’s a direct IPLC to Europe, and sometime through other destinations. The major difference might result in higher latency, but at the present time, most of the international routes are optimized to provide the best routes, resulting in closer latency ms. So let’s put this factor on the side.

LTE:
Unfortunately, the mobile is a non guaranteed service. It always depends on the load within the closest cell tower and this changes with your geographic location. You will always be getting different ms (ping) depending on how many people are using the same cell tower and the time of day.

Fiber GPON:
This is the most guaranteed service in Kuwait. Usually the latency between the ONT box located in the house to the main point of the ISP is 10-15ms and that’s consider to be the least across all the other internet services. Another factor, we have CAT6 cables connecting between the ONT box and the main router which isn’t the situation in DSL areas (with few exceptions to DSL clients having upgraded their copper cables to CAT6 cabling from the MOC external point to inside the house). The GPON provides stability and FASTtelco does offer the gaming package on the GPON due to the reduction of error factors.

DSL:
The various ISP’s differ in local ms (ping) latency depending on the equipments they use, the different routes and the types of services they have with the MOC. The best way to compare is to test the local ms (between you and your ISP). This will indicate the exact latency which will assist you when conducting the comparison between the different local ISP’s.

When an ISP conducts a test on the clients house, they check the external point, and that’s what’s guaranteed. Meanwhile, the local building cable (copper) is out of the scope. Therefore, a proper cable needs to be in place. Today most of the DSL areas are over 30 years old and so we heavily recommend to replace those old copper cables with CAT6 cables in order to have a much more stable service.

The router also plays a major part with the service and is the last factor that can effect your internet latency.

The local coding school “Coded” is hosting an event tonight with Fasttelco to test an ultra fast internet connection that they claim to be the fastest in Kuwait. The connection will be a 500Mbps fiber connection and everyone is invited to come and try it out. To test that speed you can either bring your own laptop and connect it to one of the available ethernet cables or you could use one of their test laptops. If you’ve got a huge file you’ve been wanting to download or upload then this might be a good way to do it. For more information click [Here]

The Ministry of Communications has set new maximum prices for various DSL speeds and as of now Qualitynet and KEMS have both updated their prices online to reflect the change. According to a person I spoke to at Fasttelco, they have yet to finalize their prices but it will most likely be very similar to Qualitynet and KEMS.

Prices above are yearly.
Sources: Qualitynet – KEMS

I’ve collected most of this years Ramadan commercials and listed them all below after the jump. If you prefer you could also watch them all consecutively by playing the video above or on YouTube [Here]

Note: I will keep adding to the list below, if there is any good commercial I’ve missed let me know.

Update: Added the National Youth Project commercial
Update2: Added Asnan Tower’s commercial
Update3: Added 6alabat and ABK
Update4: Added new Zain, Viva and McDonalds commercials

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]

After my previous post comparing internet in Kuwait to Lebanon I was made aware that local internet providers just slashed their prices by 45% a couple of days back. A 2Mbps connection now costs around KD120-130 a year depending on your provider which is pretty cool. You can check out the new prices below:

Fasttelco Prices
Gulfnet Prices
KEMS Prices
Qualitynet Prices

Update: I was checking my account history and found the prices I was previously paying for my internet subscription with Qualitynet and I realize now they were super expensive compared to the new ones. Check them out:

July 2007
1Mbps (2Mbps free for first 3 months)
KD506 a year

July 2008
1Mbps (2Mbps free for 12 months)
KD380 a year

July 2009
1Mbps (2Mbps free for 12 months)
KD361 a year

Qualitynet and KEMS have both published their bandwidth limits. Strangely they both have the exact same limits which are the following:

Speed – Daily Download Limit
512 Kbps – 1GB
1 Mbps – 1.7GB
1.5 Mbps – 1.9GB
2 Mbps – 2.9GB
3 Mbps – 3.8GB
4 Mbps – 4.7GB
5 Mbps – 5.4GB
6 Mbps – 6GB
7 Mbps – 6.8GB
8 Mbps – 7.9GB

If you have the Qualitynet Nitro package your download limit is slightly higher. United Networks haven’t published their limits yet but I am assuming it would be similar to Qualitynet and KEMS. Fasttelco also haven’t published their numbers although I heard that they will not be instating limits but instead punish only heavy abusers. But, unless they publish some kind of numbers, a heavy abuser might be someone that downloads 2GB a day or 20, we wouldn’t know.

Thanks Dylan

Update: I think the current system in place is unfair. My line can only handle 2 Mbps which means I am stuck with a 2.9GB daily limit and no option to increase it. I know the Ministry of Communications wants to reduce the internet prices which is great but placing download limits is not the way to go about it.

A reader emailed me saying that all ISP’s have started applying a fair access policy meaning they will now be placing limits on our bandwidth. I checked the Qualitynet website since they’re my provider and noticed that at the bottom of their DSL page it states “Terms and Condition & Fair Usage Policy Apply.” I figured that was something that was always there but I checked the google cache version of the page and noticed it wasn’t there before.

Of course I freaked out and quickly called Qualitynet, the support guy I spoke to didn’t know what fair usage policy was but after explaining it to him he said there is a temporary limit imposed at the moment due to a technical problem but once it’s solved everything will be back to normal and we won’t have any limits. Hopefully that turned out to be true because I would hate to have a limit.

Here are the links to all the ISP’s where fair usage policy is mentioned:

Gulfnet: https://gulfnet.com.kw/web/FAP.html
Qualitynet: https://www.qualitynet.net/?page_id=269
KEMS: https://www.kems.net/price_list_new.aspx?id=1
Fast Telco: https://www.fasttelco.net/AxCMSTemplates/FAP_1471.pdf

Thanks Ebrahim

Here are the internet prices for Qualitynet and KEMS from InfoConnect. They’re basically exactly the same except the 1Mbps one year price for Qualitynet is slightly more expensive than KEMS. Also with KEMS you have a setup and router fee with Qualitynet you don’t.

Annual subscribers will be eligible to:
1. Winner of the draw will get four round trip tickets to any destination in the world.
2. A draw on a trip to attend Real Madrid FC vs FC Barcelona match Prize includes two round trip tickets to Madrid, 3 nights hotel accommodation, and two match tickets
3. A draw on a trip to attend Manchester United vs. Chelsea FC matc: Prize includes two round trip tickets to Manchester, 3 nights hotel accommodation, and two match tickets

Every annual subscription is eligible for one scratch and win card:
1. 4 Mbps Annual Subscription
2. Second place: 1Mbps Annual Subscription
3. Third place: 512Kbps Annual Subscription

Scratch and win coupon for the following prizes:
1. 1TB External HD
2. iPads
3. Cash of 100 to 1000KD
4. Money back

If there is a mistake above please tell me about it. Also I don’t have the Fasttelco prices so if someone has them please share them with me.

Update: Here are the Fasttelco prices

Update2: A reader set me the following email

Regarding the ISP prices… I’ve been a Mini-DSL QNet (4 Mbps) last year.. Now its 357 or something like that. I got a call from them today (expiry today), and they gave me an offer I couldn’t resist (258 for 4mbps). I took it.

I am really getting frustrated with my Qualitynet connection. It’s like every week they have some kind of major problem and their DSL connection either crawls to a halt or just stops working completely. Currently I can barely load websites because the connection is so bad. I am trying to call qualitynet support but they keep hanging up. After around 9 or 10 minutes being on hold the music stops and I think someone is finally going to pick up when they end up hanging up on me. This happened 3 times now. Last week they had issues and the week before that. Qualitynet are you reading this? This is frustrating!

Anyone else having problems with their internet provider?

Update: Ok I am definitely changing providers. I just had my worst experience with customer support in my 3 5 year history with them. I finally got through to customer support and a guy picks up. I tell him I have a major issue with my connection. He goes uhum. I am like yeah its been like this since 5pm. He was like is this Patrick? I was like WTF? No I am not Patrick. I then proceed to give him my DSL phone number and he then replies you have a problem with your internal building line. I was like dude are you reading random notes off your computer screen? The building line problem is a completely different issue, yesterday the engineer was over trying to see if I could install 4MB and the internal line issue is that the building gets 4MB but by the time it gets to my apartment the max is 2MB. He then proceeds to explain to me I can only get 512kb. I was like what are you talking about? I was using 2MB until a month ago and up until 5 minutes ago I was on 1.5 what do you mean I can only get 512kb? Anyway long story short he had to be the most incompetent customer support person I had ever dealt with. In the end I ended up closing the phone with him and calling them back up again to talk to another support guy. Everything is back to normal now finally.

Update2: Called Kems (Zajil) and spoke to a guy who sounded like he was asleep. I asked him a few questions and he answered but he didn’t sound too confident. He told me if want to get 2MB for KD200 I need to act now because their offer expires on September 5th. So I need to make my decision in the next couple of days if I want to move either to Fasttelco or Kems. Kems I think would be more practical since our new office is going to be located right next to their head office which makes it easier in case I need to pass by them.

Update3: Qualitynet just called me and told me my problem is my internal building/house wiring and because I was a loyal customer they would send a technician to swap out the whole wiring at their expense. I told the guy that I live in a huge complex and it’s not possible to swap out the line or I would have paid for it myself. I told him I had been using 2MB for 8 months and 1.5MB for like 2 months and yesterday I was told my line could only handle 512kb. He insisted to send someone over so I agreed. Will see what happens.

Update4: Well just an update, I don’t think I will be moving over to Kems. Ever since my post multiple people have been calling me from qualitynet to see what problems i have and trying to solve it. They even offered to rewire my phone line throughout the building! Qualitynet reads my blog and they want to keep me happy so that’s more than enough to convince me to stay with them.

Fasttelco
256 Kbps = 59KD
512 Kbps = 99KD
1 Mbps = 159KD
2 Mbps = 199KD

KEMS
256 Kbps = 70KD
512 Kbps = 110KD
1 Mbps = 180KD
2 Mbps = 300KD
3 Mbps = 500KD
4 Mbps = 700KD

Qualitynet
256 Kbps = 96KD
512 Kbps = 120KD
1 Mbps = 199KD
2 Mbps = 225KD
3 Mbps = 499KD
4 Mbps = 675KD
5 Mbps = 780KD
6 Mbps = 940KD
7 Mbps = 1000KD
8 Mbps = 1200KD

United Networks
256 Kbps = 96KD
512 Kbps = 129KD
1 Mbps = 192KD
2 Mbps = 360KD

[Source]

Note: These prices are per year

At work I’ve got a Fasttelco connection and today I noticed that Skype was blocked. I don’t know how long its been blocked for but I found it strange that it was. Then someone posted a comment on the blog saying that United Networks have also blocked Skype. I’ve got a Qualitynet connection at home and at the moment Skype is still not blocked here but now I’m wondering if Qualitynet will start blocking skype to.

Update: Its also blocked on KEMS/Zajil

Update2: As of today morning the site is no longer blocked by Fasttelco

I just saw two new Fasttelco ads and I think they are of really bad taste. The one above shows a dead bat bleeding while the other one shows a bat screaming in pain as it crashes through a window. These have to be the most horrendous ads Fasttelco have ever released. Check them out on ads2blog.com [Link]

Update: I just got an email from someone at Fasttelco telling me these ads were never and would never be released by them and that they were never approved. Ads2Blog have also updated the original post stating that the ad was done by an Art Director and “were never meant to see the light nor get published”. I guess that makes a lot more sense now. Its good to know Fasttelco haven’t completely lost it.