Mada Communications just announced Home Internet Services through WiMax based services. Previously Mada only dealt with Corporate services and clients and didn’t enter the home market, but as of yesterday they have a booth in Marina Mall selling this Modem. For 20 KD a month you get speeds UPTO 10 Mbps, meaning you can get up to that speed but not necessarily stay at that speed. If you sign up this week you can get this package without any Data Caps for the first three months and after that it will be a 20 GB per month Cap, and you don’t have to sign up for a year. After speaking to them they are thinking about putting packages together at a later point to help increase the 20GB cap, maybe for every 5KD extra you pay you get 20GB but that is just a debate at this point. I went to Marina and bought two of them, one for me and one for a friend who lives in Khaldiya. Honestly its pretty cheap and worth trying out to see what kind of download speeds we can get out of it.

This is supposed to be a plug and play system, you switch it on and it works right away. I switched it on by Fintas since that was my first stop and for some reason it didn’t connect. I had other stops throughout the day so I decided to take it with me and plug it in and try it where I go.

It has two Ethernet Ports and Two Telephone Ports for ISDN service which is to be introduced at a later stage. Its not a small device, its about the size of an iPad when you see it but I do like the simple design of it.

Where it worked well:

• Mishref
• Shamiya
• Kuwait City
• Qadsiya
• Dahyat Abdulla Al Salem

I got speeds varying from 5 to 8 MB Downloads, and 0.2 to 2.8 MB Uploads which is pretty decent. Overall WiMax technology has been around for a little while now but its still a bit unstable. Overall its an excellent service from Mada Communications and I hope they rethink their Data Cap strategy. I was testing using a direct ftp download to check on the speed fluctuations and it ranged from 500 Kbps to 1100 Kbps which is pretty impressive overall, the pings are bit high though so anyone using it for gaming would be annoyed. I like the service I just hope it doesn’t get too saturated and can support a larger number of customers. Also one note they are still not available by the shalaihaat so its still just within the initial areas within the main residential areas around each ring road start from the 6th ring road and heading towards the city. I’m still going to tweak it and mess around with it but overall its pretty good.

(I Hate Data Caps! So Much!)