Mada Communications (formerly known as Arab Telecommunications Co.) is the newest Internet Service Provider for individuals in Kuwait with the latest WiMax technology. With all the recent fuss about the Data Caps in Kuwait by the well-known current and bloodsucking ISPs, Mada seemed as a decent solution for me because of all what the other ISPs are planning to do, Mada offered their WiMax services, UNLIMITED (which is everybody’s right) for 3 months/KD60 and the router for free. After the 3 months they might charge you for the caps and their services might be limited as well. Therefore, I thought it would be a good opportunity to use it for these upcoming 3 months with my really heavy usage of the internet. I’ve been using it for 2 weeks now, and so far everything looks not bad, considering and comparing the options we have in Kuwait. Despite the fact that Mada still not fully covering all of Kuwait provinces with their promised 10Mbs, and specially my area Surra (I’ve been also told by Mada that my area still not fully covered), thus it has a stable 1.5Mb to 2.5Mb, which is kind of good for me.
Configuring the router needs no brainer, it’s a matter of plug and play. After plugging the router, it will blink for few seconds and then you’ll see the Mada network in your Wi-Fi scanning result, put in the Username/Password that can be found underneath the router itself, or just use the 2 meters ethernet cable that comes along with the product. To access the router configurations page, browse to http://10.1.1.254/ and enter User as the username and password; you can change the password once you log in into the administration page.
Now, one crucial thing must be provided with my internet connection, that is Peer-to-peer. The first two days it was working fine with no problems whatsoever then it was hell for me, my downloaded torrents weren’t moving that fast at all, I was really disappointed and thought Mada gave up to those Leeches’ pressure (the other ISPs), as I heard they declared war against Mada. Till I read Mark‘s tweet saying that Mada has an issue with their Uplink, and that took approximately 3-4 days to get fixed, after that I was unleashed again to the P2P world.
Bottom line, the service is great, and they’re willing to improve their WiMax soon to cover all Kuwait’s areas eventually and equally. So far it’s the right choice unless your area isn’t fully covered yet, again, Mada is covering all of Kuwait, but its coverage varies from one area to another so before subscribing make sure that your area is included in their priority list so you’d know what to expect when purchasing their services. To really grasp what I’m getting from Mada, once I was downloading my iTunes/Mac OS X update, few P2P files were active too, and playing Black Ops online with no issues to notice!
