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Kuwait- VIVA Lays Foundation for Long Term Evolution (LTE), VIVA Kuwait today announced that it is testing the latest standard in mobile network technology – 4G. Click ‘read more’ for images from VIVA’s press conference.

LTE increases the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks.VIVA Kuwait continues to focus on the quality of experience for our customers.

A 4G network will make it even more feasible for VIVA Kuwait customers to access Internet services such as online TV, blogging, social networking, and interactive gaming- all on the go.Mobile Multimedia services will also prove to be even more enjoyable VIVA Kuwait’s 4G network, which also improves mobility, provides high throughput, and more efficient use of radio and online live streaming TV networks, reduces latency, and plug and play feature that allows the addition of new device without requiring reconfiguration.

“It is a privilege for us to give customers an opportunity to experience LTE, which is the latest standard in mobile communication, with its advanced efficiency, high capacity and speed,” added Al Awadi. One of VIVA Kuwait’s key objectives is to make it possible for our customers to access the most advanced technologies in the telecommunication sector.

“Testing the 4G network in Kuwait is an exciting advancement for all of us since we know that LTE is going to take the communication sector to a more advanced level,” said Engineer Najeeb Al Awadi, CEO, VIVA Kuwait.“

Thanks to Nawaf from Uptill1.com for letting us use his pictures. He was invited by VIVA to the press conference and after testing the new blazing 4G connection, here is what he has to say:

We were invited to attend the VIVA’s “VIVA Speed transition Experience” press conference that was held yesterday in their Marina Mall branch at 9-ish PM yesterday.

The beginning of the press conference, they said “we told you in our last press conference that we are going to release something big in the coming weeks” I had no idea about the last press conference but got excited just because they were hyping it up for a few weeks now so it got to be something big. “We are proud to announce the first 4G network in Kuwait” and held up one of 2 4G modems they had at the conference.

After that they invited the attendees to to some hands-on testing and if anyone got any questions. All the reporters had questions and all the blogger were on top of the laptop to do some testing.

After fiddling around with the device and the laptop doing some speed tests that showed up to 70Mb Download speeds and up to 30 Mb upload speeds (those were the best result we’ve witness during the event.

VIVA will be the second telecom company to release an LTE network after Norway’s TeliaSonera. But after some googling it turns out that TeliaSonera is actually Swedish/Finnish . And after asking Mr. Najeeb Al-Awadi way LTE (Long Term Evolution) instead of WIMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) he said there are a number of reasons, LTE has much better theoretical download (360 Mbits/s) and upload speeds (80 Mbits/s) than WIMAX (144 Mbits/s Down and 30 Mbits/s up). The other reason that its backed up by most major carrier in the world. Unlike WIMAX which has its only operational WIMAX network in the US by Sprit Network (4th largest telco. in the States).

Also there are plans to upgrade the current generation of LTE networks to what is called LTE Advanced which has theoretical downlink speeds of 1 Gbits/s.

The expected release of the Kuwait’s first 4G network is Q4 2010. Mr. Al-Awadi said we are almost ready to release it just waiting for some paperwork to clear from the ministry.

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