As many of you are already aware - the IMEWE cable is already installed and was due to launch on Dec 13 - but due to conflicts between Minister and Ogero, the activation is pending.
Nahhas had sent a letter to the IMEWE consortium to inform them of the ministry’s decision to deprive Ogero of its prerogatives on the IMEWE project
A statement issued by Nahhas said Ogero informed him about the inauguration event only 10 days in advance. “Ogero also did not provide us with regular reports about the steps achieved in the project and the last updates we received were dated March 2010,” Nahhas said in the statement. “As a result, we asked [Director General Abdel Mon’em] Youssef to provide us with the file that contains all the preparations details and we informed the IMEWE consortium that Ogero does not represent the ministry anymore in this project.”
Ogero released a statement saying that Lebanon joined the negotiations during the establishment of IMEWE in 2006 and since then has been an active participant in the preparations through Ogero. “Ogero has also heavily participated in proposing solutions to various technical and investment problems facing this project,” the statement said.
It also added that Youssef was constantly sending reports to the Ministry of Telecommunications highlighting the latest steps by Ogero on the project, adding that its latest report was sent on November 5
. It said that IMEWE consortium gave Ogero the authorization to prepare for the launching event because of the company’s professionalism and high credibility. Ogero also expressed its surprise at the ministry’s decision to isolate it instead of rewarding it for its efforts.
full article
http://goo.gl/EsGWE
Lobbying and pressuring for activation is a must and I think the tech community here in LebGeeks can play an important and active part in at least shortening the delay we have to wait and avoiding what happened with DSL.
This is why I contacted Samer a while back and got his ok to call for a meeting for the people interested to collaborate on building an action plan.
I suggest to hold 2 meetings based on the top 2 popular days in order to ensure that everyone gets to participate. I also suggest that each meeting is in a separate part of town.
This meeting will be part of a bigger lobbying effort going on - So far the following people have been contacted and expressed strong interests in the IMEWE : (not everyone is invited to meeting, this is just lebgeekers meeting)
NGOs / Organizations : cyberACT , Social media exchange
Techies : Lebgeeks, VCoders, Lebanese bloggers, Ma3bar.org
Companies/startups : Quantum, VISP
So I am hoping we get to meet as LebGeeks first, get organized, brainstorm ideas to share with the rest of the groups .
So please get your ideas ready, invite your techy friends ,
RSVP here http://doodle.com/dg6tugas677yghhu and shoot us a location suggestion
