Viva Bahrain 3G network and Phone battery life!

If you haven’t noticed, using Viva 3G network consumes more battery than any other network in bahrain, zain and batelco to be specific. To make the story short, Viva 3G network is actually setup on HSPA+ which consumes more power than 3G.

Brief Technical Information: Quoted from Wikipedia:

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.

zain and Batelco provide HSPA+, however, the phone has to switch to it when it requires high speed access, but on Viva, HSPA is the default.

Switched the Internet from Menatelecom to VIVA

I have been using Menatelecom for over a year now, it was good, however, I never had success with VOIP with them… I didn’t want to go back to Batelco, it used to disconnect all time, due to the SWITCH being too far and having a very bad ADSL service. I tested VIVA for few months now.. It is simply great!! Even VOIP is perfect! So today, I made the switch, and I am totally connected to the internet via VIVA.. I get about 3Mbits in my house due to low coverage.. Browsing speed is awesome! I connected it via a 3G router, and now my whole house is connected via VIVA. Everybody is happy now! Tomorrow I will pass by Menatelecom and disconnect the line.