VIVA Annonces 4G Network in Kuwait

18 Aug 2010  7 Comments

We were invited to attend the VIVA’s “VIVA Speed transition Experience” press conference that was held yesterday in their Marina Mall branch at 9-ish PM yesterday.

The beginning of the press conference, they said “we told you in our last press conference that we are going to release something big in the coming weeks” I had no idea about the last press conference but got excited just because they were hyping it up for a few weeks now so it got to be something big. “We are proud to announce the first 4G network in Kuwait” and held up one of 2 4G modems they had at the conference.

After that they invited the attendees to to some hands-on testing and if anyone got any questions. All the reporters had questions and all the blogger were on top of the laptop to do some testing. There I had the pleasure to meet in person JMB from Blushberry, Salem and Mohammed from Q8BlackMarket and mr 360Dewan himself.

After fiddling around with the device and the laptop doing some speed tests that showed up to 70Mb Download speeds and up to 30 Mb upload speeds (those were the best result we’ve witness during the event.
VIVA will be the second telecom company to release an LTE network after Norway’s TeliaSonera. But after some googling it turns out that TeliaSonera is actually Swedish/Finnish . And after asking Mr. Najeeb Al-Awadi way LTE (Long Term Evolution) instead of WIMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) he said there are a number of reasons, LTE has much better theoretical download (360 Mbits/s) and upload speeds (80 Mbits/s) than WIMAX (144 Mbits/s Down and 30 Mbits/s up). The other reason that its backed up by most major carrier in the world. Unlike WIMAX which has its only operational WIMAX network in the US by Sprit Network (4th largest telco. in the States).

Also there are plans to upgrade the current generation of LTE networks to what is called LTE Advanced which has theoretical downlink speeds of 1 Gbits/s.

The expected release of the Kuwait’s first 4G network is Q4 2010. Mr. Al-Awadi said we are almost ready to release it just waiting for some paperwork to clear from the ministry.

I would like to thank Mrs. Hind Ahmad Al-Nahedh for the invite.
360Dewan’s coverage here.
Q8BlackMarket’s coverage here
More pics after the break
Thanks to the guys from Q8BlackMarket for the extra pics :)

About the Author

N

  • heema

    If it gives a good ping time, low packets drop and with that speed when it is broadly used. I would say forget about dsl on fiber internet. We will wait forever to get those damn fiber cables to our homes.
    Privatize!

  • http://q8nri.com Ricar

    Say, do you mind if I share your pics with our readers ?

  • http://www.q8blackmarket.com Salem

    Nice review, Your more than welcome N :D

  • DVLz

    Great post ;)

    1) Most important whats the download limit? 60GB?
    2) Any idea about the price?
    3) Is that the only device available, damn huge!

  • http://uptill1.com N

    Ricar: of course not, knock your self out :)

    Salem: Its been great meeting you guys and thanks again.

    DVLz: hey man, its been a while. Thanks. for your questions:

    1) current VIVA data subscriptions have no caps (limits) so I’m guessing they are sticking to their guns on this one. I’m always recommending VIVA data plans to my friends if they have good coverage in there area due to that fact.

    2) they said that the price will be “reasonable” and should be affordable by the masses. but no exact price.

    3) At the moment I think yes thats it, they talked about the size and how “they will shrink with time” but till the hazy release date I think thats it.

    On another note, they did say at the event that the current price of the device is KD3000!!! I cant confirm the price but the CEO jumped in and said that its just the current pricing for the prototype and it will drop as soon it becomes available in the market.

  • DVLz

    If I remember correctly Viva 21.6Mbps speed connection had 60GB limit. The 7.2Mbps remained unlimited, that’s why I kept sticking with the 7.2Mbps cause it’s way better than my 256Kbps DSL connection lol. My connection can’t even handle 1Mb. Anyways thanks for the info bro :)

  • http://www.zdistrict.com Marzouq

    Thats fantastic! Didn’t know they were implementing the LTE network, they are beating Zain to the finish line with this one! I’m curious about their pricing and planning to test it thoroughly!




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