Having been here in KSA for three months now, I've had reason to tool around with trying a couple of ISPs... and let me tell you that service levels vary wildly.
I can unequivocally say that award for the worst customer service I have ever experienced from an internet service provider goes to Zajil.net. Connectivity was intermittent, they charge extortionate rates, and their technical support was non-existent. In fact myself, along with a number of colleagues, have had tech support operators just hang up on us mid-sentence.
When I first tried to get set up with them at home, they sent out an "engineer", who was qualified to insert the CD in my laptop and let autorun do its thing. When the install didn't work, he set about making a complete mess of my laptop (I have Windows Vista Ultimate installed - something he'd never seen, but insisted he could make it work). When he'd finished messing about, it took me an hour to repair the damage. If this kid was a qualified "engineer", then I'm Lawrence of Arabia. So when considering an ISP in Saudi Arabia, remember these words: Zajil.net are f@#*&ing useless.
At the complete opposite end of the scale are Mobily. They are the new kids on the block in the mobile communications market here in Kingdom. After I ditched those cretins at Zajil.net I went into my local Mobily office. It was a big spacious building all decked out in trendy furniture, with a cafe and some of the most friendly and helpful staff. I bought a pay-as-you-go 3.5G internet card for my laptop and they even installed the software for me then and there. High speed mobile internet - I am very impressed so far. There are a few patchy areas of service around Riyadh, but generally I'm very happy.
Today I had to call the Mobily customer service number. I haven't been able to ftp my personal website where I post pics of my adventures for my family and friends to view. The guy on the other end was very polite when I explained my problem and said that he was very sorry but Mobily don't offer that protocol yet, but it is planned. He then took my mobile number and said that he would check with his superiors as to when that service is likely to be introduced and then call me back personally with the information. Now that's more like it... well done Mobily!
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2 comments:
Hi,
I am thinking about getting mobily connect.
Does Mobily support FTP now ?
Also do you know/can test if they support the SSH protocol ? As the customer support people did not know what SSH was.
Thanks
Hamza
Mobily has recently added support for FTP, but I don't know about SSH.
I've also since done the firmware upgrade on my Huawei e220 to get 7.2 mbps, although I've yet to achieve anywhere near those speeds.
Overall, still very happy with Mobily.
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