With the recent cable cutting and slow down of the Internet comes my beautiful exclusive article with Zain, not to mention the crappy data cap that has been put on most of the Mobile Internet Devices provided by other Service Providers. Earlier in March I was invited to attend a private demonstration of one of the top-secret new devices that would be coming out in the near future, I was invited by Mr. Mohammed Al Muhaini, who is part of the Social Media Group along with some of his other colleagues.  I felt all important and special to get a real life glimpse at this secret device which in all reality if it fell in my hands would be abused simply because I would be able to satisfy my heart’s worth with all the TV Shows and Movies I would love to watch.

What is this device you say?

Well you have all heard of the LTE Technology that is being used abroad in many countries such as the US & Japan, as well as some Middle Eastern countries I believe such as KSA.  To state it scientifically, LTE is “a preliminary mobile communication standard, formally submitted as a candidate 4G system to ITU-T in late 2009, was approved into ITU (International Telecommunications Union, IMT-Advanced and expected to be finalized by 3GPP in early 2011.” (Wikipedia)   In short, it is a new form of technology similar to what we have today as EDGE/3G networks, well LTE is a variant of the 4G network.  It was first proposed in Japan and ever since has been adopted as the international standards.

What does LTE mean to you?

With LTE the download speeds and upload speeds have surpassed anything and everything that a normal connection can give you it can go all the way up to 3.3 Gigabit peak download rates if not more however when it comes to the device that will soon be provided by Zain it would probably reach the 100 Megabit connection if not a bit more.

How would LTE look like?

You know at right now how you can easily go out there and subscribe to any e-Go package from Zain, WNet package from Wataniya, or even the VIVA Internet from VIVA?  They provide you with a USB Dongle which you plug into your computer and allows you to access the Internet.  Well the LTE technology is no different than that you will be given a similar device in which you plug it into your computer and experience the Internet as it should’ve been!

What did I do in my visit?

From the moment I got there, I hit it off with mostly everyone on the Social Media team, it helped that I was already sort of famously known as the Apple Guru (due to my insane obsession [see something good can always come out of it]) but that wasn’t the awesome thing.  I was shown to one of the computers where an LTE connection was already there established and it was being used.  I was told I could check out the download speeds for myself and well I did.  I decided I wanted to check out the latest BluRay Rip release of a movie which was around let’s say 3GB in size and asked them to download it for me to see the speed of the device.  For some reason it was a bit slower than usual in which it took close to 3-5 minutes to fully download 3GB movie.  Whereas, previously a 3GB download would’ve taken all of 1 minute or so; it all depends probably on the traffic and because this device is not out in public yet there shouldn’t be that much traffic but once in a blue moon it happens.

What is my verdict?

I fell in love with this product and I told it to Mohammed and the guys, if you ever released that beautiful piece of technology rest assured I will be the first to grab me one (granted that the subscription rates are a bit decent and not insanely high) but I warn you I will actually abuse it to no return therefore consider this my warning.  After they laughed with me on that topic we grabbed some screenshots and off I was back to my normal life.

Stepping into the land of Hi-speed internet is just awesome it makes me feel as if I am Alice and I’m in Wonderland I never want it to end but good things always end sometime.  So that’s been my take on the LTE Technology that will soon be offerred by Zain.

Thanks to Mohammed & the Zain Social Media Team for welcoming me into your humble home and showing me this awesome device, I highly appreciate it!

Note: The image provided above is not the picture of the actual device, I had forgotten my camera at home that day and forgotten to actually snap some shots other than the Screenshots I snapped.