My parents have ADSL internet and a wireless network! Contrast that to the situation two years ago when almost no one was willing to touch ADSL because of the prohibitively high price. The prices went down earlier this year and, as expected, people started subscribing. So what’s next.

Deregulation is here
Consumers are starting to feel the impact of the deregulation of telecommunications in Jordan. The market is starting to heat up. Five telecom companies have already been licences and nine others waiting in line. It looks like before 2005 is over, we will have a small flood of new telecom services to enjoy (and get confused about).

In a pre-emptive strike, Jordan Telecom launched its Voice over IP based (VoIP) Wainak international calling card, enabling cheaper calling to certain countries. JT has also launched its Livebox service, an internet technology based telephony service that provides subscribers with an additional telephone number and ADSL internet access, ‘free’ unlimited calling between Livebox subscribers (rejoice phone addicts!), a single tariff for local and national calls, discounted mobile calling, per-second charging of international calls as well as online account administration and payment. Although I was hoping to see higher internet speeds announced with the Livebox launch, the announcement is definitely an interesting development. What caught my attention was JT’s promise of a dedicated 24/7 free helpline for the service, staffed by “specially trained” support people.

On another front, Batelco launched what many observers of the telecom market have been expecting: international calling cards. Under the brand name Dunya, Batelco is offering international calls at 7 piasters to a list countries as well as discounted calling to countries not on the list.

The inevitable shift to internet-centric communication is finally happening. When you think about what a service like Skype enables (basically, free international calling) you start to understand that existing telecoms have to adapt, and the new telecoms trying to figure out how they can use the new technology to gain market share. In short, the internet has disrupted the world of telecom and we are witnessing the start of the shift in Jordan.

What about faster DSL?
Broadband internet is at the center of the second internet revolution the world is witnessing today. I just came back from a trip to Germany and was quite amazed on how fierce the competition and promotion around DSL services is in that market. The entry level DSL service being offered is 2 Mbit/sec (ie 2000 kilobits/sec). Offers for 6 Mbit DSL are becoming commonplace. The new catchphrase in Germany is “flat rate”, meaning that DSL services are being made available that are not bound by time or download volume limitations.

In places like Singapore, 10Mbit and 25Mbit connections are being offered to residential customers.

Jordan’s ADSL connections currently come in 3 flavours: 128, 512, and 1024 kbps. Subscribers who download more that a certain amount of data per month get their connection switched down to a lower speed. Clearly then, the next step should be the introduction of 2 Mbit and, dare we says, 4Mbit ADSL connections. It would be great if such connection speeds are priced within reach of current ADSL customers to encourage a migration towards faster connections.

I wouldn’t bet on this happening before the end of the year, but with the dynamism in Jordan’s telecom market, I’m keeping my fingers crossed nonetheless.


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11 responses to “Jordan’s ADSL: what’s the next speed threshold?”

  1. Yazan Malakha Avatar
    Yazan Malakha

    2Mbit? 4Mbit? 8Mbit? What’s the use? It’s going to be capped anyway! What’s the use of broadband if you’ll be surfing at dialup speeds (yes, I once managed to get capped to 64kb/sec)

    Wanadoo is the most generous in terms of bandwidth-allowance, a 512 home user gets 5 Gigabytes (10 if you’re using 1024) worth of downloads per month; a corporate accounts gets 10, a premium corporate account gets 20 GB. You cannot purchase extra bandwidth, I tried with all providers, the only way you can maintain your speed is to juggle several accounts. I’m currently juggling 5 (3 corporate, 2 personal)

    I think we should be more concerned with increasing our download limits (upload is not counted for some reason), than to increase our download speed at the moment.

  2. Yanone Avatar
    Yanone

    as i witnessed during my stay in amman, the internet backbone connections to the outside world seem to be a problem for wanadoo, meaning that they have a low-bandwidth or very high-latency connection to international internet backbones. this also underlines my (our) experiences with websites being cached on wanadoo’s servers, probably also in order to reduce international traffic. an unbearable behaviour to me and to webdesigners, who can’t control changes of their websites online. we had to back-check websites through an FTP-client, as only HTTP requests get cached. this is still internet-stone-age.
    hence an increase in ADSL bandwidth for jordanian customers will definitely (or hopefully) do some benefit for domestic connections such as local VoIP-calls, as they probably have a good infrastructure installed within the country, but will do nothing for international traffic. and i suppose that the vast majority of traffic is international. so i hope for you that the upcoming new telecoms will care for their own connections to the outside world instead of just buying traffic from wanadoo, as it won’t increase internet performance at all, if not decrease it.

  3. Yazeed Al Oyoun Avatar
    Yazeed Al Oyoun

    Yazan, I tried most of ISPs in Jordan for broadband, and they all had this attitude “You’re downloading, so why are you surprised your speed went down?!!”, it pissed me off everytime someone from technical support mentioned that, until I moved to TEDATA, unlimited bandwidth, the only drawback about it, is that you will be surfing with an “egyptian” IP, but hell it’s worth it, I have 1mbit now and I download/upload as much as I want, therefore I’m getting the service I paid for unlike all other rip off ISPs.

  4. Rami Avatar
    Rami

    This article is almost a year old but now TeData (an Egyptian firm) now offers ADSL lines with no cap. Download and upload as much as you want. So it seems have the dream has been realized, now all we need is faster speeds here in Jordan.

  5. ayman M.M.A Avatar
    ayman M.M.A

    all isp copanies now sucks. even Te-data, they capped there speed to 7GB/month, so the only adsl speed that worth to be installed is 128Kb/s with any available company.

  6. Muayad Avatar
    Muayad

    I think jordan needs to move a little faster in speeds and monthly usage, I currently work for a communications company in the U.S. (Comcast), and we are coming out with a 50/KBS”>MBS. Huge difference, with the internet use these days, everything is on the internet, people need to be able to use the internet with no limit, Thats fine if its expensive, but it should be offered for people who need it or use it, saying says “You get what you pay for”

  7. Jordan Avatar
    Jordan

    i hate orange :(

  8. هههههههههههههههه Avatar
    هههههههههههههههه

    كل هالشركات لصوص واولهم مزودوا النت اللي بنعاني منه في الاردن من زمان
    والواحد بيصبح هيكل عظمي عند الوقوف على سرعته البطيئه جدا جدا لدرجة الموت هذا ان لم تصبح عظامنا رميما

  9. NetLover Avatar
    NetLover

    I have come to the decision that TEData is misleading, disloyal, dishonest and with no credibility towards its customers and assumes that the majority of its customer base is naive or even stupid.

    I subscribed to their 512kb/9GB plan (still on 128kb because orange did not upgrade speed yet), but here is the catch:

    I am a computer engineer myself and know many technical stuff, so after my subscription I installed accurate download monitoring programs which count how many MBs I have downloaded. Here is the trick of TEData, if you download 25 or 30 MB, they subtract 100-130 of your balance, If my connection is idle – that is I am not using the net – they subtract 55-80 MB/hour they trick you and eat up your quota very quickly.

    I have contacted customer support and reported the issue, they said their was a small mistake in my account, they restored 1GB to my remaining download and said everything was OK, but it was not, in less than few hours, they subtracted 600+ MB of my balance, How on earth could a 128kb connection consume that much in less than 4 hours

    I filed a complaint to the manager still waiting for a response!

    People, BE CAUTIOUS and monitor your downloads, use tbbmeter program to monitor how much you REALLY download

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I have been all over the ISP issue in Jordan, and I can tell you now, none of them is worth it. Every company is a ripoff or scam that sells people too much ‘promised’ bandwidth that is never delivered. As well as the high latency or ping, but their hardly to blame for that. HOWEVER, speeds are a disgrace, Jordanians can simply never catch up with the modern age if their internet is too slow, too limited, and too expensive. Moreover, customer support is the worst i have ever seen, call them, and either you don’t get through, or even worse, you DO get through.. but this is the part where they act dumb, unless they actually are. These ISP companies run scams such as jumping your quota in order to maintain just barely enough bandwidth to support their customers. Not to mention how they scam people in thinking that 200 Kilobytes per second is the same as the 2048 Kilobits per second that we pay for, and this applies to all the speeds that we pay for, they simply assume Jordanians are naive and uneducated that we cant figure out that our speed SHOULD BE 256, or AT LEAST close, where 10 percent of the time (if your lucky) you get 200, and if you download from your ISP’s LOCAL server, to check the cap of your bandwidth, it would be around 200, if not less, AT ANY TIME. If you complain about the speed to customer support, they would ask you to go to some website, download, and if you tell them your download speed is 200, theyll tell you your internet is working fine, or theyll give the excuse that the bandwidth is under pressure. WELL I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT NO MATTER WHAT TIME IT IS, JORDANIAN ISP’S LIMIT YOUR BANDWITH TO LOWER THAN IT SHOULD BE!! some isps even boast that they are below the 80% bandwidth international standard ,, well i wonder how they achieved THAT. I even remember an orange representative being asked on whether they plan to increase bandwidth, she replied that they were well within their customer bandwidth, as well as being no demand or need for more bandwidth, such an increase would not be necessary (that was last year in a magazine). SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE:

    1) LOW SPEEDS AND HIGH PING, not getting as much speeds as promised, tricking people into believing that for example 200 Kilobytes per second is the same as 2048 Kilobits per second which we payed for, when IN FACT it should be 256, and same applies to all speeds, and this is not a bandwidth issue from the ISP, it is a CAP or LIMIT that they apply from the company, effectively saving on 20% of their bandwidth

    2) POOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT that either acts dumb or tells you that there is nothing wrong, often asking you to disconnect your modem and router for a while, then telling you that it might be a problem with your router (Yea right) and to connect directly.

    3) JUMPING YOUR QUOTA in order to lessen your speeds to an even lower level when you don’t even download anything, for example in batelco, you used to be able to go into their website and monitor your downloading, however after noticing some very false values (EVEN AFTER I WAS LIMITED, i was boasting more download capacity than ever possible) and calling them on the phone several times, they removed the feature!

    This is ridiculous, i have yet to meet a Jordanian happy with his/her internet connection, complaints on every company have been constantly made, the only solution is to wait for a miracle to happen. I am hoping that rumors about the government setting up fiber optic infrastructure for internet would be an improvement. Meanwhile, THE ISP’S SHOULD BE SUED DUE TO THEIR MALPRACTICE AND DECEPTION OF EVERY CUSTOMER. PROOF IS RIGHT THERE BEFORE OUR EYES, COMPLAINTS ARE MADE DAILY, THERE IS YET A DAY WHERE SOMEONE DIDNT TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW THEIR ISP HAS A CERTAIN ISSUE. IF WE DONT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. MAKE YOUR VOICES HEART PEOPLE. THIS IS JORDAN, IM NOT SOME RANDOM GUY WITH NO KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THESE THINGS, I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT BANDWIDTH CAPS ARE THERE AND ARE LOWER THAN WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, BY FAR QUOTAS ARE BEING PLAYED WITH DAILY SOME EX-EMPLOYEES HAVE REPORTED THAT IT IS ALL SCAMMING AND A BIG RIP OFF FACT !

  11. Fadi El-Nemri Avatar
    Fadi El-Nemri

    I live in jordan, and i HATE the internet speed they give us

    1st ) i sub’d for 512 MB for 48$ jd’s, when i want to download something my download speed is at 2kb/sec! thats fucking WRONG!