I have been a subscriber to umniah’s U-MAX for over 14 months now (Since the very first day), and although the service was very bad at times, most of the 14 months were OK, I don’t get my full speed but that really is not an issue, a subscriber to 2Mbit I get 30KBYTE download daytime and 110KBYTE at night, no complaints.. Although I wish I could see a 200 someday, come on umax pull your socks up.

So I like this wireless technology, Umniah uses the Airspan ST technology, the signal is always full where I am, and I understand the shortage of bandwidth they experience, it is all ok to me.

So I went to get a backup line from Wi-Tribe and I was ripped off in the worst kind of way, i didn’t expect this from Qtel Group (Qatar Telecom) and the A.A. Turki Group (ATCO), as i thought, having Qtel as an owner of witribe would mean that wi-tribe is backed by deep pockets that cared for there brand names.

First, forget about PPPOE, it is radius at WI-TRIBE and if you are downloading something with FDM, expect a corrupt file since the session duration is 30 minutes no matter what you do (Used to be 30).

Then 2 days after I buy the service, the radius login page (pas.aptilo.com) would only open after midnight, and when it does, it can keep you logged in for 10 minutes at best, and then there is another 10 minutes trying to connect again, The speed is worse than GPRS on my mobile phone, and after 4 months, I totally lost hope using their service.

To make things worse, the Airspan EasyST lost signal at one point, so I held it by the antenna (I often hold the umniah by the antenna fine, and it is the same CPE), and it get separated, surely, the plugs (2, one round and the other square) fit one way, so I put it back, and the pin broke, all I needed now was another antenna.

I went there and explained what happened willing to pay for a new one, but rather than just making me pay, I had to wait for some supervisor and then pay for the thing, antenna’s don’t come alone so I had to pay the equivalent of $210 for a second CPE.

Now, what if the already detached antenna was the reason behind my WI_TRIBE problems, NOP, I visited the witribe shop at Mecca mall some time ago to see something, and the staff there was trying to connect with the same exact problem as me, so if the staff are having my problem, the issue is not on my side of the connection.

In short, I paid the equivalent of $500 for nothing but headaches and 20 minutes of internet connectivity, oh joy.

Conclusion, before you hear something good from many many people about WI_TRIBE, don’t get it, it is by far the worst service I have seen in my life.

Anyway, since i have no use for the CPE (Although it is working fine, the antenna is the issue), i thought some photos of the CPEs internals could be usefull to someone, so here are the photos of the airspan easyst insides