Mr. Aziz

KEMS vs. United Networks

After experiencing a whole year of bad service & lack of quality from United Networks, I chose KEMS on my endless journey to find a decent Kuwaiti ISP.

KEMS is amazing service-wise, it’s amazingly stable. I subscribed for a 512kbps DSL connection and I got ~600kbps+ of download bandwidth and 512kbps of upload bandwidth. When I had the united networks connection, initially both my download and upload bandwidths were 512kbps if I remember correctly. However, after a couple of months they changed the download to ~600kbps and upload down to 256kbps without even asking my permission. KEMS suffers no lag at all. On the contrary, United Networks is the definition of ‘lag’. Price wise, both KEMS and United Networks are kind of equal; which is to Kuwait standards a cheap price, but compared to the international standards its a complete RIP OFF. 8mbps for 20 or 25 pounds in my house in Scotland, while 2mbps is now around 900kd/year or $3,000/year (was ~3000kd/year or $10,000/year a few months back).

One problem with KEMS though, I’ve heard their customer support is helpful and actually does help you. Well, it didn’t really amuse me. Actually, it turned me down. I’ve been calling them daily asking for a solution for Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) not working - everything else worked just fine. I just hate it when they say things they just don’t understand. I’ve triple checked my router settings which are fine. I’ve tried Windows Live Messenger Troubleshooter which showed that my connection is fine. So what was wrong? Basically there was one little command I should’ve executed and that’s it, problem solved. Of course the customer support guy asked what OS do I have (Windows Vista) and my router (LinkSys WAG200G Version 1.00.09) but that’s as far as he went. He and all his other colleagues kept claiming that the problem is with my computer and I should reinstall Windows Live Messenger and it should be fine - basically they were blubbering just so that they don’t look like they know nothing about my situation. They should’ve tried to find a solution and helped me instead of throwing me into a loop. I found the solution to my problem after googling for a while, here. Basically, run cmd.exe as an administrator and type this command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

then restart your computer.

Overall, KEMS wins over United Networks easily. UN’s customer support wasn’t that good anyway.

Note: while writing this post, my KEMS connection disconnected - first time since I subscribed two weeks ago.