Ministry of Communications actually going to improve internet ;D

battikh

rahmu wroteNot exactly. As a public institution (owned by the state), Ogero's role is not to make money but to provide a public service, in this case to provide a viable Internet situation for the Lebanese. It doesn't have to make benefits either. The Social Security system of France (one of the best in the world) is currently loosing 2 billion euros (that's fairly 3 000 000 000$) per year. The competition should be between private ISPs fighting for market shares.

are you seriously comparing an ISP to social security?
and even if you want to do such a weird comparison, half a french's salary goes for taxes, so the LEAST he should get is good services for the taxes he's paying.

EDL is also losing HUGE amounts of money, is it a good thing? the whole government is losing money, does this mean they're doing the right thing? The more profitable the country is, the more services they can give you. if they have no income, how are they supposed to provide to the people?
if the public sector tries to be profitable, it's bad
if they want to raise taxes, it's bad
how is the government supposed to make money? and if they don't make profits, how are they supposed to improved the infrastructure and the services?
i still have difficulty understanding how you even thought about comparing ISPs with social security...

rahmu wroteA friend of mine had a theory that Ogero's real goal is to limit Internet access as much as possible, mainly because it makes a lot of money on international calls (with so many Lebanese living abroad). If internet starts spreading and high-speed connections become widely available, what's stopping VoIP to take over??

you don't need super fast connection for voip, what we have is more than enough for voip.
as for the loss in international calls, they'd make the difference somewhere else, by having more customers using the internet or whatever.
it's as saying that cellular was a loss for the government because people stopped using landlines.

take UAE, more than 75% of the population is made of expats. can you beat that in amount of international phone calls? fast internet haven't stopped them from making money...

nuclearcat

hussam wrote
nuclearcat wrote
hussam wroteDon't private ISPs particularly VISP have more customers than Ogero? Or is it the opposite?
Is there any place to know how much customers Ogero have?
Not directly but I know LAU are Terra customers (or at least they were when I was there) and everyone I know uses WISE or Cyberia. The only places I've seen so far that use Ogero are network game cafe and places like that.

Universities, internet cafes - not very profitable customers. All of them need cheapest bandwidth and using it till last drop.
Ogero grab all _profitable_ businesses, e.g. non-it companies, who pay good money for internet and don't use it.
And sure end-user customers, their "quota-limited" tariffs filtering out heavy choosy users and because of advertising and buzz they are getting people who don't know how to count quota and falling in a trap of extra fees at end of month.

I am curious to see how they will sing when they will introduce 120Gb quota. All "heavy" users will move to them and it will be interesting tariffs for internet cafes even. I am sure their network not ready for that, and also soon coming issues of co-interference in cables, cause in Lebanon they are done in "yalla,yalla" way.

nuclearcat

rahmu wroteOne of the solutions could be that Ogero stops its commercial business all together and focuses on selling bandwidth only to ISPs. You could still find a way to make this profitable and thus improving the situation overall.

Ogero should be removed. Or sold.
If you force them to sell bw to ISP, Ogero employees will find way to blackmail ISP's to force them pay bribes, to compensate their low salaries. Or services will be too crap. IT business is like that, or u pay well tech and get good results, or you will suck at any case.

A friend of mine had a theory that Ogero's real goal is to limit Internet access as much as possible, mainly because it makes a lot of money on international calls (with so many Lebanese living abroad). If internet starts spreading and high-speed connections become widely available, what's stopping VoIP to take over??

Just some food for thoughts...

Absolutely right theory. But it is not only one reason.

hussam

nuclearcat wroteOgero should be removed. Or sold.

Sure, but it's not gonna happen. Ogero has been there since at least the 90s. It's part of the government. The government won't sell it.

rolf

battikh wroteisn't it how most businesses work? that's competition, there's rarely fair play and ethics in business...
are ogero wrong to try to grab more business? ogero are doing what any normal business is supposed to do.
the problem is somewhere else, probably the laws that don't protect ISPs, don't treat them all equally, ...
but if ogero have the legal right to do whatever they are doing, why shouldn't they?

I think there is competition when all start on the same, fair level, and the "best one" wins. I dont think this is the case. Ogero, as an end-user ISP, has a giant wasta.

battikh

rolf wroteI think there is competition when all start on the same, fair level, and the "best one" wins. I dont think this is the case. Ogero, as an end-user ISP, has a giant wasta.

so if i want to start a search engine, i should force google to lower itself to my level, force them to drop all their other services that give them and advantage and all just so that we can start together and see who is better?
If they have privileges, you can't blame them, as an organization, for using them. Instead, change the laws that give them these privileges, giving all ISPs equal legal treatment.

nuclearcat

battikh - not like that.
Guess why ISP startup easy outside, especially for rural areas, and why it is difficult here.
And this differences should be removed at least.
Startups and venture business always can bring new ideas and refresh market.
Monopoly... remember a fall of Roman Empire. Generally it is a fate for everything that has exclusive position and can remove any competition at the beginning.

battikh

Ogero mainly has an advantage coz they are the ones who have access to all of the bandwidth.
For example, the IMEWE cable was financed by ISPs, Ogero being the one in lebanon which invested in it. The question is, was ogero the only one biding on it because they're the only ones who decided to? Or was it because legally, in lebanon, they are the only ones allowed to? Or was it due to political pressure and blackmailing?

I think this should be answered before blindly blaming ogero as an organization.
If legally they are the only one allowed to do so, then blame the law.
if they were the only ones choosing to bid, then blame the other ISPs
If they blackmailed people to be the only ones having access to it, then blame ogero.

battikh

nuclearcat wrotebattikh - not like that.
Guess why ISP startup easy outside, especially for rural areas, and why it is difficult here.
And this differences should be removed at least.
Startups and venture business always can bring new ideas and refresh market.
Monopoly... remember a fall of Roman Empire. Generally it is a fate for everything that has exclusive position and can remove any competition at the beginning.

i'm not saying the opposite, i agree with that.
what i'm saying is that from a business point of view you cannot ask ogero not to try to grab as much business as they can.
if there is nothing that protects other ISPs from monopoly and fair competitiveness, blame the law (or lack of laws), not ogero. ogero is acting as any business should.

nuclearcat

My humble opinion - IMEWE not best choice at all. First it is too much long(away), because it is built for India and Pakistan, who have very big needs in bandwidth.
You can bring cable to Cyprus, for now, imho best choice, or from Black sea... Bulgaria for example have huge capacity. Will be cheaper and closer to "core" of Europe, and more away from non-friendly countries with permanent issues.

They didn't ask anybody, noone know plans how they will sell it, and funniest thing it is funded from money paid by ISP's _indirectly_ ,not for bandwidth or services, money from taxes, licenses, etc. This is terribly wrong. Money paid for government should go to social needs and country needs, not for their business ideas, making them more "profitable" than pure business.

hussam

nuclearcat, you're making it look like it's the end of road for private ISP.
Will Cyberia, terra, visp, etc.. stop existing some day because of Ogero's monopoly?
Yes Ogero is making it difficult. But really what changed in the last two month? If currently it isn't profitable to compete with Ogero, how were you able to do that two months ago? Certainly VISP should be capable to compete with Ogero. Even if you can't, that's still no reason not to try and compete. You can't continue to be fixated on Ogero and their monopoly otherwise you won't achieve your own goals.

It's like with operating systems. Windows has all the market even though it's a crappy OS with crappy hardware support and people keep having to separately look for drivers and manually download and install them. Linux, a good operating system where most of what you need is in the kernel tree doesn't have the market share windows does. Still we're seeing desktop related technologies like KMS improve. It's because someone is doing something or is pushing for something to be done.

Ok forget about your network (VISP). Consider Cyberia. Many people complain about being throttled to death at night. Still, eventually Cyberia will manage to find a solution.

Really, I wish we had representatives from other ISPs on this forum. It would be nice to see what all ISPs think about Ogero. I'm happy Nuclearcat contributes to this forum on behalf of VISP.

battikh

nuclearcat wroteMy humble opinion - IMEWE not best choice at all. First it is too much long(away), because it is built for India and Pakistan, who have very big needs in bandwidth.
You can bring cable to Cyprus, for now, imho best choice, or from Black sea... Bulgaria for example have huge capacity. Will be cheaper and closer to "core" of Europe, and more away from non-friendly countries with permanent issues.

through cyprus, wouldn't the length of the cable be lebanon-->cyprus-->italy ?
and through IMEWE, the length connecting us to europe would be lebanon-->egypt-->italy, right? it's not a big difference in length...
but well, whatever it is, at the point we are in our infrastructure, ANYTHING is good enough, as long as it's an improvement, i'd take it.
btw, how much international bandwidth does cyprus has access to?

nuclearcat wroteThey didn't ask anybody, noone know plans how they will sell it, and funniest thing it is funded from money paid by ISP's _indirectly_ ,not for bandwidth or services, money from taxes, licenses, etc. This is terribly wrong. Money paid for government should go to social needs and country needs, not for their business ideas, making them more "profitable" than pure business.

i'm not sure i got this part. aren't governments supposed to invest? isn't extra bandwidth a social/business need for the development of the country?
and was the problem that ISPs were not aware of this link? or that they were not allowed to bid for it?

kareem_nasser

I read once that Charbel Nahas said that the Lebanese Telecommunication section isn't mature enough to be privatized.

J4D

yalla yalla , keep dreaming . i can imagine the huge amount of the countries bandwidth ( to be brought) being bottle necked by the shitty network alla yistor w y3een :)

Georges

Everyone wrote_Everything_

At the end of the day... I'm not willing to come back to Lebanon ! This is heaven here...
You can all suffer to death back there

Ayman

I read in Le Commerce a document saying the Minister of Communications he will upgrade Ogero plans. 256 KB plan will be a 2 mbps and will have a limit of 120 GB. This will happen in the upcoming months (2010) discuss?

We have been hearing the same news over and over again for years, this subject no more interests me because I have lost faith with what Lebanese media or ministers say, lets just wait for a miracle, I like the Lebanese saying that says: "3ish ya kdish la yenbot el 7ashish" :P

battikh

^^ the IMEWE cable is a fact, not talks. we already paid for it and it is being implemented. if you don't trust the lebanese government in their talks, i think you could at least trust alcatel-lucent which is pulling the cable. why would alcatel delay the works or not do it at all? for political reasons? for stopping lebanese users from using voip and forcing them to do internatinal calls through ogero? doesn't make any sense... it is due for march (if the problems in egypt get resolved).
the only thing that might make it not as good as its true potential is if the local infrastructure (laying the fiber across the country, which IS in progress) doesn't get finished on time and gets delayed for some stupid reasons.

J4D

battikh wrotemarch (if the problems in egypt get resolved).
the only thing that might make it not as good as its true potential is if the local infrastructure (laying the fiber across the country, which IS in progress) doesn't get finished on time and gets delayed for some stupid reasons.

stupid reasons haha ! we have a lot of them , that should not be a problem ! :(

nuclearcat

hussam wrotenuclearcat, you're making it look like it's the end of road for private ISP.
Will Cyberia, terra, visp, etc.. stop existing some day because of Ogero's monopoly?

Few will remain. Most of them facing difficult times this days, and i am sure someone can disappear soon. Hope not VISP.

Yes Ogero is making it difficult. But really what changed in the last two month? If currently it isn't profitable to compete with Ogero, how were you able to do that two months ago? Certainly VISP should be capable to compete with Ogero. Even if you can't, that's still no reason not to try and compete. You can't continue to be fixated on Ogero and their monopoly otherwise you won't achieve your own goals.

VISP had to close free wifi hotspots, charity projects, sponsoring just good projects (opensource).
I had some ideas in minds for schools and universities.
Sure, we can compete. We can turn evil as everybody and do pure business. And i definitely don't like this idea.

It's like with operating systems. Windows has all the market even though it's a crappy OS with crappy hardware support and people keep having to separately look for drivers and manually download and install them. Linux, a good operating system where most of what you need is in the kernel tree doesn't have the market share windows does. Still we're seeing desktop related technologies like KMS improve. It's because someone is doing something or is pushing for something to be done.

Software business model COMPLETELY different. N1 difference - no running costs. Please don't compare at all.
You can do Linux code at spare time, big companies can push their code and benefit from it, and nothing of that can be applied to ISP.

Ok forget about your network (VISP). Consider Cyberia. Many people complain about being throttled to death at night. Still, eventually Cyberia will manage to find a solution.

Defect lays in the core. ISP's introduced high speed tariffs without ability to upgrade their networks. For example GDS still using obsolete Alcatel with 10Base-T ports (!!!!!!!). Highly inefficient devices...
None of ISP's have enough funds to do big projects to break this circle and implement new decent technology.

Really, I wish we had representatives from other ISPs on this forum. It would be nice to see what all ISPs think about Ogero. I'm happy Nuclearcat contributes to this forum on behalf of VISP.

Never you will have them. Actually most of other ISP's chosen way to outsource all job to outside.
Buy Cisco, Juniper, BlueCoat, Alcatel, pay for support, get certified engineer to do remaining.
This engineer cares only about money he do, as soon as bell ring at 17:00, he close computer, and he go home. Preference in his head is his personal issues, and job at ISP is just pure business for him. Sure if he have some unsolved problem - it will make him worry at evenings, but nothing more.

My heart is with VISP, i sit overtime without asking extra payments, and even at home i am thinking how i can do things better.

VISP tactics - try to get talented people, and depend on them. Use opensource, cheap components, do your own development, do innovative (even they are less reliable sometimes) solutions. Example - we have our own router os (based in linux kernel, glibc + busybox and other stuff), it can run as router (bgp/rip/ospf), NAS, proxy and more things. I did some calculations, if we gonna paid for appliances - it will reach more than million dollars... that was supposed to go outside Lebanon.
As much as i can i am also contributing to community. Google "Linux visp.net.lb" Try to find single contribution from other ISP's employees to opensource. They are faceless, soulless corporations.

arithma

Yorgi wroteNothing

We really don't care.

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