2007-06-04

Internet in South Surra

South Surra is a new residential building Area in Kuwait. A few years ago, there was no infrastructure. Today roads, electricity, water, sewage and most importantly Fiber to the Home, exists. The only service you can get from the fiber right now is basic telephone service.

According to KEMS, we can expect Internet service in South Surra as soon as the end of June 2007. Initially they will be offering 256Kbps for the first 2-3 months and later will go for higher speeds up to 4 Mbps. You need to have a telephone line, but the technology used is not DSL but fiber, so none of that splitter business but rather, you connect your router / switch / hub directly to the RJ45 port found in your "telephone" box. The existing fiber hardware supports up to 1.5 Gbps, but no promises yet on when this could happen.

Fiber Point
Fiber Point

Close up of connections
Close Up of Connectors


You plug into LINK1 and from there you can connect to the Internet.

If your fiber point is in a concealed location in your house, you need to do some wiring and extend a twisted pair cable from the box to the place where you want your Internet to be.

No news about pricing, my assumption is it will be similar to what KEMS is offering in its current DSL pricing.

5 comments:

  1. ADSL over phone lines utilizes a protocol called PPPoA, while the one over fiber, is called PPPoE.
    So, you'll simply need a router with PPPoE capabilities OR hook it directly to your computer, which can/should have a PPPoE protocol installed, or have a program to do that for you.

    Quality Net offers Internet over fiber as well.
    They're selling at the prices shown on their website.

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  2. mbh: thanks for the info. I did not hear anything from Qualitynet about fiber. When I called them a few times, the person on the other end was talking about DSL over fiber, which I know is impossible, fiber is a whole new technology, DSL is for copper lines only. I got the feeling that they where not ready so I went for KEMS. When I spoke to KEMS, they came over with a wireless router and asked me to connect it to the LINK1 port once they announce that it is ready.

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  3. I know for sure that Qnet is already offering subscriptions to South Surra homes. I personally know a few.

    I think what he meant was PPPoE over fiber. I don't think the tech support guys are well versed in the workings of the internet heh.

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  4. Great helpful diagrams, but isn't that still a little slow?

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  5. Kuwait has a public cap of 2 Mbps, by all ISPs. Why exactly, I still haven't found out.

    As for the support people, you'd have to find the proper person yourself :/
    Anyway, just tell them that you want Internet over fiber and they'll hook you up, regardless of what "they" call it.

    I know 1 person who already signed up for the service (not sure if it's running, though) and another going back & forth between KEMS & QNet.
    Personally, I'd go with QNet as KEMS has a very bad history of support, unlike QNet.
    QNet's support for both residential & business solutions is great. And no, I'm not an employee there, nor am I getting a commission :p

    For what it's worth, Fast Telco has set its track to go with WiMax.

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