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I noticed this Ad in today’s sports section in al-watan newspaper ..

I called Zain’s Call Center to ask about the service, but they didn’t know any more details about it or even the cost of the SMS .. even when I asked for the number of the third-party company that provides the service they didn’t know that either ! all what I got is that the cost of 1 SMS might be up to 0.5 KD !!

I wasn’t interested in subscribing anyway, all I wanted is to know how exactly does the service work, because all what you can tell from the Ad is that it’s nothing but a Sports Betting Service!! and I have no Idea when did this become legal and official in Kuwait !

Using this map browser tool you can see how any city is connected to the internet just by clicking on it ..

I’ve used it to see how Kuwait is connected with other cities ..

As you can see in this image Kuwait is only connected to Dubai ( the regional provider ) and KSA .. ( It is also connected to New York Through Dubai ) [corrected]

Now the internet is decentralized, but still there are a number of large international commercial, government and academic networks that forms the backbone of the internet, and to rely on a one or two routes to connect to the internet is a very risky situation,it was upsetting to find out that Kuwait is not directly connected to any of those, in stead it’s connected to the internet only through Dubai .. I thought that this was normal and all GCC countries are connected through Dubai but the bad news was that Kuwait is the only one !! All the other countries are connected through 5 different routes ..

This is a very risky situation, because there’s a single point of failure, if something wrong happens to the connection between Kuwait and Dubai , a whole country will be disconnected from the internet .. No matter how reliable the cables are , having a single point of failure is a deadly mistake ..

Other GCC Countries Connectivity

KSA Connections

Bahrain Connections

Qatar Connections

Oman Connections

Notice how Kuwait is the least connected GCC country ! all other countries have at least 5 connections..

Internet Map

Using data collected from a distributed scientific project Chris Harrison Managed to summerize some of the information in a very visually appealing way ..

This image shows the Internet Connection Density, the stronger the contrast the more connectivity there is ..

while this image shows the network connections between cities across the globe with the intensity of the edge contrast reflecting the number of connections between the two points ..