A couple of days ago, a friend of mine who is using a wireless router and modem in the same device, that he got from outside of Jordan, suddenly lost his internet connection, after a trillion trial to call Orange to see what happened, they checked the connection and told him that all is well and nothing is wrong with his connection.

I went to his place to check what’s going on, tried to connect using Orange’s modem and it was working. Then what would I do to get the right settings for the DSL connection of Orange to make the other modem works. Another trillion time trying to call Orange Customer Service Center and the answer machine keeps saying that all lines are busy. After like 15 minutes they answered the call and i started to talk to the customer serivce representative trying to get any information from him about the DSL connection settings. The only thing that he could say that they don’t help me to get any other modem up and running. As if we got the modem from one of their competitors in Jordan (you know, we have like 10 companies in Jordan that have the service).

The customer service guy told me that the only thing he can do is to help me to login to Orange’s modem so I can get more information from it. He gave me the IP address of the modem and guess what! it wasn’t the right one. Is that a policy (I doubt)? or the people who are supposed to support us themselves need the support?

It’s obvious that it’s not a policy especially when the support team of Orange visited my friend at home to check if there is something wrong again and they couldn’t get the modem works again! What I did is I moved to my home, logged in to my modem and got the right settings, and finally it’s connected again.

Yesterday I received a message from Zain that I never expect to get anytime soon. Finally Zain ADSL is the first ISP that provide broadband internet connection up to 8M of speed.

Directly I called the customer service center of Zain to get more information, and I figured out that they provide the service with 4, 6 and 8Mb. I asked about the prices of the service which are less than getting the connection for 2Mb. Do you know why? you don’t have to pay anything to Orange (Jordan Telecom Group) now to get the service. We will only pay for Zain as an ISP without any monthly payment to Orange. The installation fees are 70JDs for those who don’t have an internet connection already and they are offering the service with free installation until the end of this month.

The dream doesn’t stop there, Zain will be providing WiMAX service in Jordan with the same speed. But still they don’t have the small modem that we have seen in more than one TV ad for more than one country in the Arab World since 2 years.

I wish that Zain will not work under the umbrella of Orange anymore to provide the internet connection as we were really suffering especially for the last 2 weeks.

In the newspapers today, I saw promotions for both Orange and Zain about this amazing new service that came out of the blue.

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Al Ghad newspaper was very proud to announce few days ago that we have in Jordan around 92,000 ADSL accounts! Yes we have a lot of internet user, but I bet that all of those users are being cheated in a very dirty way!

I used to have an ADSL account with Orange ADSL; it was 128kbps account at the first stage. I don’t know if Orange is underestimating our abilities to calculate that 128/8 equals 16; which means that I must get a speed of 16KB/s of download. The speed has never exceeded 9KB/s on this account. I kept calling them asking about that issue and they used to answer me with a variety of reasons: “the line is under maintenance”, “you are sharing this line with a lot of people (as if it’s my problem)”, “maybe it’s a temporary problem and it will be fixed very soon”, “you have a problem with your computer”, and a lot of similar answers.

Few months later; after suffering for a long time at home and at my office I decided to fix this issue. I needed a high speed connection (I had one from Orange at the office and it was a disaster also). When I moved to a new company where they are using Zain (Fastlink formerly) as an ISP; I called them and got a new offer for a new high speed connection.

Diffidently everybody knows that the internet connections here in Jordan are all provided from Orange (Jordan Telecom Group). Few weeks after starting to use my new ADSL account; the same problem came out again. I kept calling the ISP and they always say the problem from Orange, and when I call Orange they always say it’s the ISP!

Now, the technical staff at Orange has found another way to evade the fact that they can’t stand that number of ADSL users.

Don’t be proud that we have that much of ADSL users in Jordan. Because you are just saying that 92,000 people and companies are being cheated “3ainak… 3ainak”.