Zain originally has a 40% or 60% stake in Mada Communications, and it seems they are in the works to make it 100% at this stage. Mada has gotten a lot of good press for their WiMax services which they launch just before summer and the turbulent times of the Data Caps. Overall people are happy with their current services with Mada, they do have their issues when they update the towers, some times it increases speeds and sometimes they decrease the speeds drastically. Overall I think they have somewhat evened out, getting between 5 – 8 MB which is honestly really good but not the initial 10 – 11 MB that we used to get. The way their current system works is that they have a unit attached to every Zain Tower in a concentrated area that they cover, and each one has about a 2KM radius, that is why it is very different from location to location. Their Mada also provides other services but thats for corporate services that they give primarily to Zain. So it makes sense that Zain wants to buy them out but the question is will things change for the users?

Now the item in Question… Data Caps?

Since Zain has them, will they be applied under new management, what are exactly the implications we face. I’m not sure if the management will change but I do know how Zain are about their branding, what is theirs has to adhere to their rules. The system that Mada uses won’t put stress on Zain’s current 3G data network so I hope that they would let Mada’s current policies of no capping to continue and hopefully expand on it. Its always good to see services improve and expand and I hope its the case with this.

What the hell is going on with Phone lines in Kuwait. I just came to accept that when people call into to Kuwait the call quality is usually crap, but when you call out you get a decent line. Over the last few years for some reason the lines have gotten worse, and lately most of the time when someone calls me from overseas I get some random 222#####, very rarely is it with the caller ID and sometimes its a 5 digit number like 29268. Now recently over the past two weeks I have gotten some strange caller ID numbers which start with 9982#### or 9878####. Now it seems that some Zain lines are being used as Voip numbers, I’m sure that it isn’t Zain doing this because all international lines in Kuwait are controlled by the Government for the most part, if they know they have control over it. Seriously, when someone calls me from abroad I would like to know who it is.

Recently Viva have been tackling more and more online marketing, pretty much all of the telecom companies are seeing the value of social networking and blogs in Kuwait and its a very nice thing the Big Three are doing. Recently over the past year Viva seemed to be aggressive about gaining online coverage getting more and more blogs but what I find to be restrictive about their sponsorship. If you are sponsored by Viva you can’t cover any social networking event by the other telecom companies, and you can’t cover new product details of the other company. This is when I think that advertising isn’t worth it when there are restrictions of these kinds attached to it.

Update: Wataniya & Zain do not have that policy, they are fairer in the way they do business.

After using the phone for the past 10 days I have really put it through its paces, overall I really do like the phone except for a few small issues which I am overlooking because its a pretty good phone. And its now getting released around town for 190 to 200 KD and the carriers will have the soon with packages, if you are looking to upgrade your blackberry then this is a decent choice.

Pros:

• Excellent Screen
• Very smooth Operating System, OS 7 has made the right kind of improvements
• Excellent Browser
• Thinner then all the other BBs
• Nice Carbon Fiber and Rubber Back, doesn’t slip from your hands and can slide on a table if you want it to
• Excellent quality build
• 8 GB internal Memory
• Very nice Keyboard, feels very good when using it, nothing beats a Qwerty keyboard
• Loud Speaker, had to lower the volume because it was too loud
• Charges very very quickly

Cons:

• Lighter then the previous Bold and Touch but still a bit heavy
• Crappy Camera – No Autofocus
• Crappy Battery, barely lasts 6 to 8 hours from normal use, but if you switch off 3G and keep it 2G only it increases to 10 to 13 hours
• Price – A bit on the high side

Overall I am very much liking the Blackberry 9900, its smooth, very well built phone from Blackberry. But what I found surprising is that it doesn’t have autofocus which is a very big disappointment. Battery life isn’t that good, I think we all got used to crappy battery life from all the new phones, when a while ago all the phones had two to three days worth of use, to get decent battery life from your phone you have to switch off 3G and it will easily last the day. Overall this is a decent phone with a few drawbacks that I mentioned, but Blackberry has to do a lot better then this to win people over. Their operating system has improved but they need to change their tactics because they have lost a lot of ground to Apple and Android.

Rating:

We have all reached a point with our Blackberries when we wanted to throw them at the wall. I got the Blackberry Torch when it first came out and I gave up fixing the issues that it had, my email never worked on it. I didn’t think of purchasing another Blackberry really until there was a lighter one and with solid operating system. Recently my Torch has been restarting on its own and with the announcement of the new 9900 I was looking forward to trying it.

Initially I’m not too fond of the Bolds but I needed a thinner Blackberry and wanted to move on from the Torch. I was hoping that the new operating system would be vastly better then before, and I liked that it booted so quickly. I got to playing with it right away and started moving things around, and I liked the OS and the feel of the phone. Its a solid phone but not too heavy, very good for a 5.0 MP camera since other phones have surpassed that now. I especially love the rubber on the outer edge on the rear of the phone and the carbon fiber back, gives a very clean and light look to the phone. It has more of a brushed aluminum frame then it does a chrome frame, thankfully I hate chrome so it isn’t too bad once you see it. Overall its a very nice phone built by RIM with a nice and smooth operating system, I’m going to put it through it’s paces once I’m done transferring one phone to the other. Got the phone for 243 KD unlocked from outside of Kuwait and that includes delivery, if you are looking for a new BB and you want it light then this the phone for you.

Thanks to TouchOfMeh

I have been planning to write this post since I was getting fantastic service from Vodafone UK while traveling in Europe. And the funny part is the day I landed in Kuwait I get a text msg from Zain stating “Welcome back your loved ones are waiting for your call”, then an hour later my phone gets disconnected, luckily it isn’t my primary phone.

Data Roaming Pricing Structure

Zain

• 0.006 KD per Kilobyte so about 6.144 KD per 1MB

Vodafone:

• Europe: 85p a MB up to 5MB, then £4.25 for each 5MB after that
• Rest of the world: £3 a MB up to 5MB, then £15 for every 5MB after that

What Vodafone does better then Zain:

• There is a charge of 50 British Pounds for data, not including normal call charges
• This charge cap can be removed if requested by the user, also you get notifications when you are 50%, 80%, or 100% at the Cap where ever you are roaming
• They disconnect the Data and not your phone line when you reach the cap, unlike Zain who disconnect everything and no notification
• Also a side note if you have a Vodafone plan then you can also get a package for 40 British Pounds per month to get 25 MB a day to use with your phone line which is very useful and more then enough for your phone

Overall my normal phone with the vodafone line used about 300 MB worth of data in one week, it was my only access to the net so it was very Data intensive period for my regular phone. This cost me a total of 255 British Pounds or 113 KWD, if I did the same type of data roaming on Zain it would have been 1843.2 KWD which is insane. I had my Blackberry on which had a Zain line in it, I would never call from it or do anything with it except replies to BBMs, and as soon as I arrived back in Kuwait they sent me a welcome message and disconnected my phone within an hour, no notification, no call, no nothing. TMobile & Vodafone both manage to contact the customer even when abroad for irregular activities and make sure that the charges aren’t ridiculous but Zain doesn’t mind cutting off the customer in the middle of no where.

I can understand Zain saying that they can’t provide the same prices in Europe as Vodafone has, since Vodafone does cover Europe. But even in the Middle East where Zain is based we get charged insane prices, they don’t have agreements across their own networks when it comes to Data. I know that Kuwait’s international phone lines are controlled by the Ministry of Communication so they can’t give us local calling all over the Middle East but at least Data is controlled by the operator, you would think they have a system in place for their Data charges or have packages in place, and they would be able to come to an agreement between STC and Etisalat to provide mutual data services across each of their networks, it is a long process but something that would benefit the customer at the end of the day. But with the way things are now we will always get the short end of the stick.

Since getting the first Android phone I have loved the quick development of the OS and the variety of the phone, the updates were initially extremely annoying but they have gotten much better at it and more streamlined with more manufacturers on board with a larger variety of very cool powerful phones.

My last phone is the HTC Desire and I have banged up the phone until there isn’t much left of it. I have had my eye on the SE Xperia Arc since it was announced and especially since they would launch Android 2.3 Gingerbread with it, not like the mistake they made with the X10. The SonyEricsson Xperia line is a very beautifully designed line of phones, and the Arc caught my eye.

I did the migration between the HTC Desire to the Xperia Arc over a two week period, I wanted to get used to it and small differences between the HTC Sense customization to the Xperia customization, and I am a big fan of the HTC Sense UI so it took some time. Migrating the contact details, emails and usual settings took just 10 minutes. But I took my time migrating the programs, I wanted to see what kind of widgets it had preinstalled and then added the programs I like and the new ones I wanted. My old phone had a limited memory so I couldn’t add any more applications, I kept running out of memory so in this case it had a substantial amount of memory on the Xperia.

Some of the programs I installed:

• 3G WatchDog
• Sonos
• BBC News
• GReader
• Latitude
• FourSquare
• Shazam
• DropBox
• ESPN
• RetroClock
• RetroDate
• Flixster
• Wifi Manager

After using the phone for a few weeks I’m impressed with what SonyEricsson have done and I hope they keep making some high quality phones such as these. The battery life is decent not great, I expected it to be better. The build quality is very nice, one solid piece, and I like the buttons on the bottom but sometimes I touch the screen instead of pressing the buttons which does something else. The feel of the phone is amazing, its very very light, sometimes I forget its in my pocket. The screen is huge, 4.2 inches is a lot of real estate that you can use, and the touch interface and keyboard is very good. The camera is 8MP with a very clear flash, it is seriously amazing, better then anything I would expect from a phone. Overall I think this is a fantastic phone and I love everything about it, except the battery capacity it needs to be doble what it is now

The two biggest mobile GSM providers in the US are T-Mobile and AT&T, and now AT&T is buying out T-Mobile USA for $39 Billion, part cash and part stock. AT&T want to increase its revenues and customer base with this buy out and this is one way to jump ahead. This is interesting news since they both took different routes to develop their technology and customer offering, but this buyout is shocking to say the least. I have always been against AT&T and their policies, and I preferred T-Mobile over AT&T but now they are going to be under one umbrella once this buyout is allowed by regulators. Then the big two will be AT&T & Verizon, and they will have a control of prices, and it will be interesting to see the pricing and packages they have in mind. I just hope they increase their speeds overall and connect their network so it wont be a sporadic network with spotty coverage.

Link: Yahoo

Now this new phone has peaked my interest, I have always been a fan of Sony Ericsson but I feel like they haven’t gotten the smartphone formula down yet except when I saw the look of this phone and the specifications. Its a powerful phone inside a very thin sexy looking case and its running Gingerbread (Android 2.3), when they first launched the Xperia they launched it with Android 1.6, and Android 2.01 was out by then and they didn’t upgrade. SE makes great hardware but very slow to upgrade their software, this is where HTC excel, they keep updating your software and the phone just keeps on going.

Specifications:

• 8.7mm Thick
• The Arc comes with a 4.2” display
• GPS
• 8.3Mpix Camera
• HDMI Out
• 1GHz Snapdragon CPU
• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

My phone life cycle started off with Nokia back in the early 90s, then switch to Ericsson (before the merger) in early 2000, then switching to Sony Ericsson, and just recently switched to Android with the Google Nexus first came out. Now this phone is making thinking of switching back to the Sony Ericsson platform but the best part is that its all Android and I won’t really won’t have to do much except sign in with my Google account and everything will sync automatically.

I was thinking of upgrading next year, it was probably going to be one of the HTC phones which are to be announced some time in February but the Xperia Arc is a definite candidate with its specifications and style, I just hope its released very soon.

Link: AkibaharaNews

I’m impressed for about 12 KD per month we are getting close to 7 MB download speeds which isn’t too bad and the price is ridiculously cheap. The reason companies can give speeds like this is because they have decent infrastructure in the UK, but prices in Kuwait have dropped have dropped drastically over the years thanks to competition. Now the problem is that they don’t guarantee speeds so technically they can give you any speed for 400 KD per year ranging from 3 to 10 MB instead of the 150 KD for 6 MB but we are getting 7 MB at this price. It seems overall that upload speeds are still somewhat limited in all locations for consumers except data centers.

Now for the wireless it ranges from location to location but the 3 network is pretty stable with my constant use. I’m only using it for surfing and some minor downloads, I’m not downloading any torrents currently. 2.5 MB/s downloads isn’t too bad at all, its about the speeds we get in Kuwait, but I think some networks in Kuwait are a little faster. I get about 1 MB/s at home with the Vodafone but around 2 MB/s in other locations which isn’t bad.