Internet in Lebanon - Articles

Minister Sehnaoui will detail the new decree scheme, in all relevant aspects, terms, and effect, in a press conference to be held on Friday 26 August, at noon, in the ministry’s headquarters

As you have probably already heard, a new decree has finally passed by the Lebanese cabinet to create new internet packages and lower prices.
Being an advocacy campaign, we decided to mirror the community’s opinion, so we created a poll on facebook asking about the users’ opinion concerning the new prices and packages.

We are pleased to inform you that following the governments decision
to improve internet service in Lebanon, IDM is looking forward to this
positive change and will gradually implement major improvements
starting October 1st, 2011.

Due to Prime Minister Mikati’s travel plan he signed the decree on Tuesday, so with the time it needs to go to the President be signed by him and be sent to the Official Gazette, it won’t make it before this Thursday’s issue. It will most certainly be issued in next Thursday’s official gazette issue. So the implementation will be on 1st of October for all Lebanese users.

While the decree that lowered Internet prices and increased download speeds, passed last month by cabinet, has still not been published in the Official Gazette, the government pamphlet that announces official business, the Ministry of Telecommunications and the private sector are confident new Internet packages will be on offer starting October 1.

The new decree also changed the way caps are calculated, Hayek and Farhat said. In the past, a 2GB cap meant users could upload 2GB and download 2GB each month (any extra uploading or downloading came with an additional fee per GB). When the decree is implemented, however, caps (which are set at 4GB, 10GB, 20GB, 25GB and 30GB) will represent a total for uploading and downloading. Most users download far more than they upload. Farhat argued that under the current system, most users are wasting much of their upload cap.

As you can see, download is @ 1.7Mbps which is superb compared to the current internet speeds, while upload is varying between 0.11 and 0.22Mbps. Ping is of course higher that it is supposed to be, and I hope it’ll improve soon. Note that I was in Beirut central district at the time of this test, and I guess speed might vary depending on your location.

BEIRUT: A lucky 4,000 Lebanese smart-phone users are getting busy exploring the benefits of 3G four days into its long-awaited pilot launch.

“I’ve made more than 7 [Voice-over IP] calls that were international since I got 3G. The connection was excellent,” said Abir Ghattas, one of the founders of youth-powered movement for faster and cheaper Internet, Ontornet.

Ghattas was one of two Ontornet members to be handpicked by GSM-providers MTC touch and Alfa for 3G’s pilot study. She’s sampling the bolstered speeds this month for free.

Telecoms Minister Nicholas Sehnaoui marked Lebanon’s 3G debut this Tuesday at USJ, where the names of some 50 university students who would be part of the pilot project were picked out of a glass box. A select few business-people and civil society members are also enjoying 3G this month.

BEIRUT: Despite the country’s notoriously slow and insecure Internet, businesses in Lebanon have begun to tap into a demand for online shopping, fueled by social media networking and a newfound consumer confidence in the safety of credit card purchasing.

“We saw the wave, and we decided to ride it at the right moment,” says Haytham El-Khoja, the co-founder of Mizalla, a Lebanese website set up two months ago that advertises itself as the region’s first online mall.

While well-established international companies have been available in the country for some time, local businesses have remained wary of branching into the market, perhaps put off by consumers’ mistrust of online credit card security, the country’s poor Internet and its lackadaisical approach to formal addresses.

BlackBerry Instant Messaging in Lebanon would see a drop in prices by 33 percent from $40 to $27, and bandwidth caps would increase from 100Mb to 200Mb, Sehnaoui announced as part of a series of “surprises” he promised to revealed prior to the show.

استفاق اللبنانيون صباح السبت الماضي وكلهم فضول لمعرفة ما آل إليه حال خدمة الإنترنت على أجهزتهم، وهل نفذ وزير الاتصالات، نقولا صحناوي، ما وعدهم به، بأن تصبح الإنترنت من 4 إلى 8 مرات أسرع، مع انخفاض في التكلفة يصل إلى 80%؟ وبما أن الوزير أعطى موعدا محددا هو يوم السبت 1 أكتوبر (تشرين الأول)، واعدا المستهلكين بمفاجآت تسر قلوبهم، فقد بدأ رصد المواطنين للمتغيرات، واستغرب البعض أن تبقى السرعة على حالها عند بدء النهار فانهالت الاتصالات التليفونية على شركات الإنترنت التي بدت عاجزة عن الرد إلا في حدود معرفتها. وقال مسؤول في شركة «آي دي إم» للإنترنت لـ«الشرق الأوسط»، أول من أمس، إن عدد المكالمات الهاتفية التي تلقتها شركته من قبل المستهلكين، زاد 3 مرات على الحد المعتاد، للاطمئنان على نوعية الخدمات التي ستقدم لهم. وأضاف المسؤول، الذي رفض ذكر اسمه على اعتبار أنه لا يستطيع أن يجيبنا إلا بما يخبر به أي مستهلك عادي: «لا تمكن زيادة سرعة الإنترنت لكل المستهلكين في يوم واحد، وسيتم الأمر على دفعات، مما يعني أن الأمر قد يحتاج شهرا كاملا».