One of the first things an expat would definitely need in Kuwait is a mobile line. Once you have landed, you are sure to be itching to tell your family back home stories from your first 24 hours in Kuwait, be it about the weather or that freaky guy giving you weird stares.
But the first thing to ask yourself is whether you should get a postpaid or prepaid line. Here are things to consider when availing of a mobile service before you rush off and get one.
Prepaid Lines
This is a great starter line for anyone who has just arrived. Surely, you do not have your civil id just yet, which is a requirement for getting a postpaid line here in Kuwait. Prepaid line is a service that requires you to put air time/credit on your mobile account via voucher cards you can buy from the phone company where you bought your line from. There is a set per minute charge on every local or international call. If you use up your credit, you can still accept incoming calls but you will need to recharge to be able to make calls again.
Pros:
Easy to acquire, just go to any phone dealer or telecom branch, present your passport, pay the cost ranging from 5KD to 15 KD.
Easy to set-up, most prepaid sim cards are already open for international and roaming services. Just pop-in the sim on your phone and you’re connected instantly.
Cons:
Recharging your phone credits can be a problem when you run out of credit in the middle of the night and you’re in a new city. Yes, you can do this online, but if the connection fails and you have entered your credit card information, would you still be able to sleep through the rest of it?
Some services are probably not available or more expensive. Local calls definitely would be of a higher per minute charge. Data usage on prepaid lines means you have to pay per kilobyte. So, if you have amounts of data to download, better be prepared to pay about 1 fils per kb.
Postpaid Lines
This kind of service gives you freedom from worrying where you will buy your next mobile credit from. You rack up as much phone usage as you want, just make sure you are prepared to pay your bills by the end of the month on a specific date set by your telecom provider. Getting this service however, requires a civil id since you are not pre-paying the service. Postpaid lines have cheaper local rates and can be bundled with a local unlimited internet service.
Pros:
This service is much cheaper than prepaid especially if you intend to make a lot of local calls.
It also allows users to have an unlimited data access within their plan for a certain fee.
Cons:
This service can be a disadvantage if you cannot control yourself when it comes to calling. Your service will be disconnected after you reach your limit, normally 60 KDs but would you like to pay that much monthly for a phone service?
If you travel and intend to use your Kuwaiti postpaid line as your main line, be prepared to pay about double your normal consumption since you will be paying even for incoming calls and if you are really unlucky the local provider in the country you are visiting might charge you even if your mobile line was just rung by anyone. And we are talking .125 fils per attempt to call you.
There you go, hopefully I was able to tackle some of your questions regarding prepaid and postpaid lines. In the next entries, I would be comparing services between the three telecom companies in Kuwait, namely: Wataniya, Zain and Viva.
Q8HUNTahan 