بالدرهم hosted Abir Ghattas to shed light and discuss the internet situation in Lebanon, after the report that we published earlier this month.

Ontornet Meets with Minister of Information

On March 19, Ontornet met with Minister of Information M. Walid Daouk to discuss the latest law he submitted to the cabinet on March 7, the Lebanese Internet Regulation Act (LIRA)   (مشروع قانون للإعلام الإلكتروني).

At the beginning of the meeting, Minister Daouk acknowledged that he should have met and consulted the online community before presenting the law to the cabinet; however his action was driven by his need to fill an urgent legislative gap concerning internet laws.

Ontornet: Why did you withdraw the law from the cabinet agenda?

Minister Daouk: The news that the law was withdrawn is totally wrong, the law was not withdrawn.  When discussing it in the cabinet meeting, it was pointed out that there are several laws, and I was asked to review it. The law was referred to the Committee in charge of Electronic Transactions who is currently reviewing it. It will be discussed, once again, in the ministerial cabinet.

I am truly open to feedback from the online community, and ready to discuss the use of words. I also don’t mind taking their comments and concerns into consideration while reviewing the law. What I ultimately care about is having a good modern law for the greater national good.

Ontornet: There are different types of websites: the news websites (tayyar.org, NowLebanon, Elnashra, etc), personal blogs (BeirutSpring, HummusNation, etc), as well as NGO/Initiative websites (Ontornet, Nasawiya, etc) along with many others. The law you submitted does not differentiate between the different types of websites, does that mean that it applies equally to all types of websites?

Minister Daouk: Today, we all know that the number of websites is constantly increasing. There is nothing in the current Lebanese law that tackles Electronic media, and this constitutes a serious gap in the Lebanese Law: this is the main motivation behind the law.  We only now have the Publications Law in our hands, even though I know that there are 2 laws being prepared now, one by Maharat and PM Ghassan Moukheiber, and another one by MP Robert Ghanem. However my problem is that the legislative process in Lebanon is Lebanon is taking way too long.

So, as I said, the objective for now is to build on what we have (The Publications Law of 1962) by adding a part that will allow the publications Law to interact with electronic media. This part consists of defining what a website is, and of giving the website owner the choice of either declaring his website to the Ministry of Information or not. It is an elective law; no one is forced to comply with it. If one chooses to declare his website he is in return getting protection.

Ontornet: Is there any place where it is mentioned that it the Law is elective?

Minister Daouk: In the legislation writing process, you don’t mention literally that a Law is elective.
But had it been obligatory, the text would have stated “electronic websites MUST” (يقتضي على من يريد النشر بواسطة الإعلام الإلكتروني أن )

Ontornet: Since this is an elective law, what are the incentives for people to register?

Minister Daouk: There are 2 pillars: duties (identification) and rights (IP protection). Once you submit your identification information, you get the Intellectual property protection and you become liable in case you committed any copyright infringement.

Another incentive is that we are creating a way to show credibility by creating this label which is important for brands and online professionals. This is similar to AOC (Appellation d’Origine Controlee) and offers tracability and a kind of self-control.

Ontornet: So you are affirming that people are free to either opt in on this law or not?

Minister Daouk: Yes, indeed. Nothing would change for those who do not register. The law offers the honest more credibility and protections.

Ontornet: Do you consider you are asking websites and electronic media to obtain a “License”?

Minister Daouk: No way on earth! It is just identification. It would be total imbecility if someone wanted to impose licensing of electronic media.

Ontornet: Why did you state limits on the numbers of website owned?

Minister Daouk: Where is this stated? [After reading the paragraph] This is because it is something that already exists in the Publications Law. I needed terms of references and wanted to make sure no distortions were created, so we extended an existing law, one we know well.

Ontornet: Even though Publications Law dates back to 1962 and should not be applied to online media in the first place?

Minister Daouk: I agree on this point, but efforts concentrated on finding an existing “vehicle” that could be used to fill in the gap we currently have, until a better and final media law is issued.

I strongly believe that electronic media is evolving fast and that a law dating from 1962 may not correspond to it but I wanted to set two main values or pillars: someone identifies his information website at the Ministry and gets Intellectual Property protection in return.

Besides, any modification or addition to L.I.R.A occurs through the issuance of decrees within the Ministerial Cabinet, rather than having to draft adopting a new law in the Parliament. This was done specifically to be able to keep up with the speed and fast evolution of media law.

Ontornet: The opening paragraph mentions the respect of public morals and gambling – how is this judged or enforced and does it have any fallouts on freedom of expression?

Minister Daouk: If someone is registering his information website at the Ministry of Information, it means that his content cannot deal with online gambling or break general public morals which is something done in all countries.

Ontornet: Does this law include for example content published on official Facebook pages?

Minister Daouk: I don’t care where content is published – whether Facebook, personal site, blog, etc. It is just that the Ministry cannot give identification to something that deals with gambling or breaking public morals

Ontornet: The big political website are the first people who won’t submit for identification since they are protected and nothing forces them, true?

Minister Daouk: I am not really that sure because they have incentive to protect their content.
For example, few days ago I read about a lawsuit against the Free Patriotic Movement  website- so anyway, those websites are famous, well known and can be sued. By submitting their info they get extra protection.

The Legal Expertise

In light of its meeting with Minister Daouk, ONTORNET discussed the content of the Law with a Legal Expert. The expert noted the following problems with the Lebanese Internet Regulation Act – L.I.R.A.   (مشروع قانون للإعلام الإلكتروني)

The Format

The Law is only one-page long and contains 8 articles. It gives very few details for such a highly technical and complex field.

Inaccuracies

Article 6 refers to the Law on Publications (قانون المطبوعات) dated 14 July 1962 whereas it provides the number of Law 382/94 which concerns Audiovisual Broadcasting (قانون البث التلفيزيوني والإذاعي). This creates confusion as to which law applies to the employees of information websites. It also does not specify which particular articles within this law(s) will actually apply to those employees.

Loose and Incomplete Definitions

The law defines 3 concepts in the first set of articles:

• “Electronic Media” (الوسائل الإلكترونية)  is defined in Article 1.
• “Electronic Communication” (التواصل الإلكتروني)  is defined in Articles 2 and 3 without any apparent reason, since it is not used anywhere else in the Law. What is then the need for this definition?
• “Websites” ( (الموقع الإلكترونيare defined in Article 4 which sets the conditions of website registration in the Ministry of Information.

However, the main “regulation” articles, Article 6 and 7, use the new concept of “Information Websites” (المواقع الإلكترونية الإعلامية)  without any previous definition.

This leaves a number of questions unanswered: What will be considered as an “information website” (and thus will have to comply with Articles 6 and 7)? Is a personal blog considered as an “information website”? Is a public forum considered as an “information website”?

The Extent/Coverage of the Law

Minister Daouk assured ONTORNET that the law is optional and only applies to registered websites as defined in Article 4. In other words, only if an author chooses to register his website will he have to comply with its provisions. See below tweet dated 22/03/2012 “@Walid_Daouk draft law aims to give persons who identify themselves optional more credibility and tracability for their websites’ content.”

However, the optional nature of the Law is nowhere mentioned in the text. Furthermore, the text does not provide clear answers to the below important questions.

• Do Articles 6 and 7 apply only to websites defined in Article 4 (i.e websites registered in the Ministry)?
• Article 1 prohibits Electronic Media to publish immoral content.  Question: Does this article only concern registered websites, or all websites? In case Article 1 applies to all websites, then there is a need to clarify the concept of “public internet content”, and whether for instance social network communications are included or not. There is also a need to provide clear legal protections in order to ensure freedom of speech and online access to information.

Such opacity might give way to a considerable amount of confusion and misinterpretations in the implementation of the law.

Omissions

• The Law does not include mentions of a timeline for further decrees regulating its implementation.
• The Law does not include transitory provisions that are more than necessary in the field. For example, do the provisions apply to content published before the law was issued?
• The Law clearly does not take into consideration international norms in the field.

Non-Technical

The Law does not provide for essential technical definitions and aspects that are specific to the field. Below are a few examples:

• Domain: Does it apply only to websites registered to .lb domain?
• It refers to old (1962) publication norms that are not compatible with the modern nature and technicalities of online publications.

The Intellectual Property Rationale

L.I.R.A does not seem to give any added value to already existing law in the media field. When asked about the purpose of this law, Minister Daouk explained that it will allow media websites to register in the Ministry and benefit from Intellectual Property protection.

However, the Intellectual Property protection provided for in Article 7 only concerns Intellectual Property violations in advertisements that are published on the websites. Moreover, registering in the Ministry and naming a representative manager who can be pursued for any violations, means that registering will not protect the website’s Intellectual Property; it will only make it easier to sue the website if it commits any Intellectual Property violation. In other words, there is absolutely no incentive for companies to register.

Bottom Line

Once again, Lebanese internet Users are faced with a “Good, Bad and Ugly” situation.

The Good: For once, a minister in the current Government takes his job seriously and drafts a Law proposal.

The Bad: The Law itself. It has no added value and its inconsistencies risk to create serious confusions and misinterpretations upon implementation.

The Ugly: The Government is going ahead with L.I.R.A. despite the alarm calls of concerned actors.

We were invited to attend to a meeting last with MOT, specifically with the consultant of Mr. Sehnaoui, Mr. Firas Abi-Nassif to talk about the feedback we have gathered from the people who interact with us on Twitter and Facebook and our surroundings. Later during the meeting, Mr. Sehnaoui joined as well.

We asked: What was the problem with 3G? What was the temp solution and the long term one?

At first the problem with 3G and lines breaking was due to wrong cables causing interference, this is basically when Minister Sehnaoui admitted we have a problem (end of 2011) and said there is a short term solution that will solve things a bit (which has been done), and there is a long term solution. The latter will take up to 8 months; until then, the QOS (quality of service) will remain weak. We need more antennas and station to solve it, they have asked for 1,400 antennas, and it will take 8 months to received them all and install them.

When will 3G cover all Lebanon?

By end of February, we should have 3G coverage in all regions

What about Ogero and the whole unavailable modems issues?

Recently, the public sector (Ogero) start accepting applications for DSL connection again and selling those modems.

What can you tell us about the centrals & DSL situation in Lebanon?

• 15% are far from Centrals. So they cannot apply for DSL.
• Almost 30% live completely outside regions that don’t have centrals.
• For those who don’t even have phone line centrals, around 30,000 like in Baalbeck, and some places in Keserwan – it is still not announced by MOT, but they’re thinking of making something called Fixed Wifi.

We have 170 centrals that are equipped with DSL, some are close, some are farther and some are even farther, and quality of connection depends on how far your house is from the central. Among these people, some people’s phone lines are weak which affects either the quality of their internet connection or not eligible to have DSL after a feasibility test is done.

Then Mr. Sehnaoui joined, and told us the following:

Mr. Sehnaoui persisted the need to distinguish between Mobile Data (improved/leapfrogged with 3G) and Mobile voice, saying people just say “service is crappy” without elaborating on the real source of the problem. He also said that we need to realize that Mobile Data has an impact on Mobile voice, moreover since we had 3G since September 2011, Mobile voice has been influenced (to the worse), however it is not essentially because we have 3G, yet it’s for the reason that the infrastructure is very weak.

Later on, the minister told us about a new dream he has, which is Fiber. He even suggested that we do a new campaign called #OntorFiber. He continued by saying that at one point, we can use Fiber instead of DSL for the centrals that are not equipped to have DSL.

He elaborated that they are currently working on making a study, then tender, then finance.

Sehnaoui said: it’s a new dream, new objective, step into the future, we want people to ask for fiber, fiber is the answer to have unlimited quota. Our target is to have Fiber to home by 2014. For now, we have Fiber to central, which should be ready by October 2012, and it is on the right track. With Fiber we can think of stuff like 3DTV and much more.

We need your help

To sum it all up, while we were at the meeting, I told them about my own personal problem which is the fact that line still cuts a lot, 3G is rarely working etc… Moreover told them that there are many people like me, yet there are many people who have good 3G (this feedback is based on our facebook page and what people tell us). Anyway, Mr. Abi-Nassif wanted a more accurate result, so if you could be kind enough to help us answer the questions (which apply to you), so we can take these results and give them back to the ministry.

Survey about 3G, it will only take 2 minutes.

Survey about DSL, it will only take 4 minutes.

Data will be collected and given to the Telecom Ministry (Upon their request)

After a cabinet was formed many wild speculations were flying around about new updates in the telecom sector, we were all intrigued about how political change is going to affect the internet situation.
The New minister of Telecom Mr Nicolas Sehnaoui kindly agreed on meeting up with Ontornet team to share the latest updates and plans.

Below are the audio recordings that we finally managed to upload. We also put a small summary with each recording for a quick read in case your ontornet could not play the files.

Please note that the summary is not an exact and complete translation/transcribing of the discussion, so please listen to the audio files for the actual live answers.

1 – The former Telecom Minister Mr Nahas  promised that 3G will be active by the end of September 2011, is this deadline still standing ?
3G Deadline
Yes
2 – Are the sales packages and prices for the 3G defined yet ? if yes, what are they ? if not, why and when will it be defined ?
3G Prices
No, prices are not yet defined – no further details were given
3 – Did the ISPs get additional bandwidth from IMEWE ?
IMEWE and ISPs – part 1
IMEWE and ISPs – part 2
All the ISPs got the additional bandwidth they requested 2 weeks ago
But we did not notice any big changes in the speeds ?
Yes, there was a change of speed but not for Ogero users, but other ISPs yes
But at ISPs everyone got a speed increase ?
Yes, everyone

<off the record>

We expected that after additional bandwidth, prices would go down

No, I have to submit an official request at the cabinet to get the approval for price changes

Even changes for the Fair usage policy has to be approved ?

To sum it up, yes, even changes in Fair usage policy has to be approved, it is a bit more complicated, but eventually yes.

No tangible changes can happen without the decision of cabinet – which we are doing as fast as possible to include drastic measures.

4 – Can we get exact ideas about the packages that you are going to propose in the cabinet ?

<off record> I can not give you exact numbers before i share them with at least the 28 other ministers – but to give ranges – speed will increase 4 to 8 times, not including the quality – if you include quality of service the increase will go up to 18 times faster
Currently users get 20% for what they pay for – now it will go up to 80% and will go like 8 times faster
Regarding the prices – they will remain the same – but users will get more speed meaning the price is effectively lower.

5 – How much of the IMEWE Capacity will be used ?
used capacity
used capacity will be 10Gegs
only 10 out of 120 ?
yes 10 out of 120
what triggered this change ? we’ve been waiting for long, we’d like to know what happened
Weather – it is bit cold and snowy in Tripoli
this question is too investigative, i can not answer

6 – What are the plans for more competitivness in the ISP sector ?
Competitivity
The ministry considers competitiveness as something really important – but now we are still working to restructure the telecom sector
Will there be efforts for users to be able to switch ISPs without waiting and additional costs ?
this is an objective.

7 – With DSL getting faster and cheaper, what is your plan to create demand for the new 3G service which is more expensive ? What are the incentives for people to switch and cover the costs and network maintenance?
DSL vs 3G
There are no ministry plans to control the market – What we have to do is lower the price to democratize the access – we want to allow the maximum number of people to access the 3G service while keeping its good quality. The main incentive for people is mobility. There can be no financial incentives because you can not compare prices between 3G and DSL – 3G is always more expensive.
This mobile access is a leap forward/jump from the slow Edge – Our plan to improve the internet situation is in 3 steps :

step 1 : fixed lines/DSL to get better and cheaper – very soon to happen

step 2 : 3G to become fast and available

step 3 : this service (3g) that doesn’t exist except in few countries around the world to become cheap

8 – We know that the ministry and Ogero relationship was tensed. Is there any improvement on that ? if yes/no – How will it affect the internet market?
Ogero
It is not the relationship between Ogero and the Ministry that is “tensed” or “not good” – there were some people in Ogero that did not apply the law as must and are not accepting the minister’s rights. This what caused a problem with people in Ogero.

“but when we are talking about people in Ogero – it is the

No, there are lawsuits between many parties, including el moudir el 3am / president

9 – on June 11 – Shura supsends TRA’s authority , yet in 07 July 2011 – Lebanon’s TRA was appointed head of Arab telecom regulators network, Can a suspended TRA be nominated – is this legal ? What is the role of the TRA on the head of Arab telecom and are there any possible advantages for lebanon.
TRA
Minister: This is a legal, not telecom question
Minister consultant: I would challenge this qualification that TRA is suspended
Ontornet: This is from Daily star article
Consultant: Well the translation is not accurate – if you read the arabic text – i would not say TRA suspended
Ontornet: So what is the role of TRA ?
Consultant : It is hard to give answer without diving into legal details
Minister: but to help a bit , shura said that 431 did not pass all its stage, it is a law that draws some kind of plan that get exceuted over time shura said that a main law was not enforced, meaning that the secondary and supporting “band” are not effective. So the TRA is not suspended, it means that ministry powers are not transferred to it yet – so it becomes a consultative body – and this is what the law says.

10 – What is the progress of work in the different areas on the Lebanese territory specially outside Beirut

Infrastructure

our main program is fiber that is supposed to cover all lebanese territories in the next 15 months
Are you facing any problems in the execution of work ?
as in everything – delays and problem may happen – but we are very hopeful to meet the deadline

11 – Are there any legislation being worked on to organize duct sharing and building codes ?
we are thinking about this, but there is nothing ready yet. This is a multi ministry effort and i am still new

After our 11 questions, the time for the interview was up, but we had a small chat with the Minister on social media, online community in Lebanon and organizing a tweetup/online Q&A with the Minister, we leave you to listen to the Minister’s take

SocialNetwork

Translating and transcribing the minister meeting turned out to be a harder task than expected. So it took us some time to put together this post… We posted the questions we asked to the minister and the corresponding audio recording. We also posted a summary of what the minister replied ( in case your ontornet connection did not play the recording ). The summary are a 99% accurate translation of what was said – we did our best to translate as accurately as we could. So please hear out the recordings for the full interview – files are in average 1 to 3 MB – with few files up to 7MB. ( we compressed as much as we could ).

Question 1 : Everyone seeks faster internet connection, with the implementation of 3G, and based on its characteristics, won’t this cause congestion hence less throughput on the 3G network which brings us back to our current condition?

Answer 1 :

Answer 1

Answer 1 Summary :

There will be a big shift to 3g due to many factors like better speed, mobility but congestion is not a major concern because currently the full capacity of the system won’t be used up for a while.
DSL will take back its major role in uses that 3g can not satisfy in the demanding markets like company needs, administration, hospitals… If no bad surprises happen , the network of fiber spinning 350 points in main areas like beirut will get into use few months after 3G.
So there will this shifting period where 3G will take a major role then DSL will follow.
We will not reach saturation in 3g soon – it will be good if that happens in a year

Question 2 : What is the current detailed situation of DSL and what are the problems stopping us from having a good connection ? and what are the plans for DSL ?

Answer 2

Answer 2 Summary :

The plans for DSL is that it goes/stays as one of the  main ways for connectivity.

What is limiting DSL currently is that :

1 – “back to our old topic, Mr Abel el Men3em does not give international capacity – if we don’t give DSL international capacity, we talk to each other ? ”

2 – No permissions – from ogero to ISP – to install equipments in main offices and no permissions to have access to the local network and the plans behind this is to create / enforce an Ogero Monopoly.

Mr Menhem’s reaction to the ministry trying to stop him is that he is pretending he has no more modems and requesting that modems be bought and sent to “mina el hosn” location to be “programed further on”.

For DSL to work correctly the following is needed :

• Good international capacity
• Good internal infrastructure – here is the map detailing the situation in different areas ( click here for bigger version).  The areas with problems are the ones in yellow and light green.
  • Brown areas : areas without habitation
  • Yellow : not even phone lines reaching the homes
  • Light green : areas with phone lines but no fiber optics reaching to the main phone switch office

Question 3 : Are there any plans/procedures for duct sharing for ?

Answer 3

Answer 3 Summary

There are technical specification and detailed standards for digging the infrastructure – but as everything – nothing is being respected . When we started working and digging we were faced by “wonders” – this is an existing situation we have to deal with. In Beirut area it is pretty messy because of the many work done – some people poured concrete inside – some people when laying new cables instead of removing the old ones they just cut them, left them there and put new cables and so on … In remote areas the infrastructure is cleaner basically because there is “nothing”. But this can be solved, not the end of the world situation

Question 4 : Does the Ministry impose any restrictions on ISP to stop them from having creative/competitive packages like TV/Radio packages etc … we see a huge similarity in all the offers content and prices is that because of ministry regulation or because ISPs are not investing/putting enough effort into this ?

Answer 4

Answer 4 Summary :

ISP have a problem with capacity and we are aware/admit this problem, but we do not have restrictions stopping them from coming with those creative packages. If they come up with something smart we will be the first to encourage and applaud their efforts.

Question 5 : What are the difference packages and prices for 3G ?

Answer 5

Answer 5 Summary :

We are currently diving into this pricing excercise, we already did simulation for different packages.

Preparing for this and considering that most people will take voice and data, in voice we are currently in an adequate case where postpaid that is somehow unlimited but with high entry fee and pre-paid which is also somehow unlimited based on how much money you have. This marketing method can not be transfered to data.

In June, there will be 3 new packages for voice where you put a budget and a limit. There will be no longer this model where you have like a piggy bank and credit and transfers – the old model is staying, but with the new cheaper and better packages people are supposed to move .

The Data (3g) packages will have this same model. the voice packages are in June and data after 3 months, like this the people will become used to this new method bit by bit . We can’t have for data the same method as the current one with recharging and all that, it is not manageable.

This is the process, the values i don’t have them in mind and we are not sure for them… for individuals we are going to have “packages” – “systeme forfait” in french. Corporates is another discussion.

Question 6 : Since 3G will be providing access to the internet at high speeds, where are they going to supply the international bandwidth from? and why not use this same source to upgrade the existing DSL connections?

Answer 6

Answer 6 summary :

It will go through Cadmus and IMEWE. Our external connectivity is through IMEWE, Cadmus, Arytar and Berytar and a weak land link to Syria . So it is imperative we go through those links that now have a huge capacity (21 lambda ) which is a lot compared to the lebanese market.

Question 7 : We’ve heard about plans to make Wifi available in public parks, is this a start of a widespread culture to be adopted by the ministry across all public places?

Answer 7

Yes, this is planned to be active soon in public parks, there are just papers pending to be signed.

Ontornet team : Is it possible this is extended to more than public parks ? since as you know we don’t have many of those ;p ?

WIFI is for free, public park there is a reason for it, we could put WIFI in university camp, but to have general public WIFI everywhere, there is no reason why.

Question 8 : How much does it take to Release and put the un-used bandwidth we  have ?

Answer 8

Answer 8 Summary

We leave it to you to hear this one out with your own ears  !

Question 9 : we have suffered many economical losses from global companies like google changing their minds about opening up servers and branches in lebanon due to connectivity issues. Are there any plans to encourage those companies to come back and invest or plans for the industry in general ?

Answer 9

Answer 9 Summary :

True, I am not going again through a bickering, but what do you think is the plan – there are some annoying people standing in the way, those people should move out of the way of businesses… the design of the network can be optimized, but there are way more basic steps… people wanting hardware, E1, STM4… those are present, there are plans, but they can’t be implemented.

Question 10 : What are the limits in uploads and downloads ? what are the prices and how will they compare to the current DSL/WAP/GPRS prices ?

Answer 10

Answer 10 Summary:

In theory the network is done on a 21 Mbps – 42 Mbps speed – of course it depends on the sharing and how much heavy users on the network you have as you know, but to compare with the DSL – we have 70% of the DSL subscribed to the 256 Kbps plan – with an actual 100 Kbps “in the good days” – it is actually even less, but let us be “optimistic” – If the user instead of having 0.1 or 2 – this is a big difference.

For home use, with more than 2Mbps while loading videos for example, the user will not feel any difference. We are not saying this is perfect, but it is a good improvement.

In the packages, many people tried and it is worldwide known that truly unlimited packages can not be given, it opens up the door to a thousand thing, so we are working on a design that give speed and certain volume for a certain price and extra usage is priced at an extra more expensive rate (like the current DSL ) .

In the near future, (1 – 2 years ) we do not have a problem in the capacity. Offer is greater than the demand, the problem is in pricing.

For Prices the costs of 3G are fixed :

• Cost of the international bandwidth
• Running cost of system and hardware maintenance and deterioration

So if we have to distribute this cost and have a return of investment based on a certain duration, it depends on the number of users. If there is a large number of users, the prices can be very cheap… here is the tricky part where we have to predict the elasticity of the demand, so for example if we put 3G at a very cheap price, will the number of its users jump in one year from 0 to 500 000 ? if it works, we can use this cheap price.

So we have to build this price based on our demand prediction. We are making this study from our databases and still working on it.

If we put a cheap price and the number of users doesn’t jump considerably, we would be giving away a free gift and damaging the DSL Market.

In short, we are still working on this.. globally speaking it is worldwide known that 3G is 2 to 3 times more expensive than DSL due to its speed and mobility. (here is the part where we all almost fainted) .

Our direction is 3G prices if not equal to DSL , it will be very close because we are taking into consideration that DSL prices must drop.

For the user, it will be competitive compared to DSL – and many users will ditch DSL for 3G.

As for the WAP/GPRS prices those are crazy prices, WAP and GPRS are an extra – it is like a luxury product, not a mass product. Its number of users is relatively low and they were just created to ensure more income to the lebanese Govt.

We can’t compare 3G to WAP and GPRS but more to DSL.

Stay tuned for further updates on meetings with the related parties

First of all, thanks to everyone who supported us, and who provided us with questions to ask to the Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas. Due to time limitation, we were unable to revert all questions to him, nevertheless we made sure that the most “in demand” questions were asked, and tried as much as possible to get answers.

Ontornet meeting with Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas

Moreover, there will be another post tomorrow about the notes we have taken during our meeting with the minister in order to cover everything that was talked about, however for now, and because we know that everyone is eager to know about 3G tariffs & packages, we thought we’d share a quick post and let you know some good news. In addition, we will also shed light on what will happen with DSL once 3G is launched in Lebanon in this post. Stay tuned for the second part will include more details about the “Whys” that stand behind our current condition, the problems we’re facing in addition to the current organizational structure regarding the TRA, Ogero and MoT. Please be patient, the sleaze is tomorrow, and remember that we’re just quoting one of the key persons involved in our Ontornet situation, nothing being said has any intent other than informative and doesn’t by any mean express our opinions when such are expressed by the Minister.

Ontornet: How will 3G’s launch effect the DSL usage in Lebanon?

Minister Charbel Nahhas: People will move from DSL to 3G once 3G is available especially because it can also be used on our laptops. DSL is more usable in services & areas which 3G cannot cover such as universities, hospitals and corporations. Currently, DSL needs good capacity and a transmission network. Lebanon divided into regions receiving transmission (it will be elaborated upon in tomorrow’s post)

Ontornet: What can you tell us about 3G Tariffs & Packages?

Minister Charbel Nahhas: There is a difference between marketed speed and actual speed (much less than marketed), and the ministry is aware of this. In 3G, suppose the marketed speed is 21 or 42 mbps, even when there will be a huge load and as it is shared, the actual speed could drops for example to 2mbps due to sharing, however it is still a great improvement from the 0.1mbps that we receive in our homes today.

Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas

Minister Charbel Nahhas: We can’t give unlimited connection, because it might lead to uncontrolable consequences.

Minister Charbel Nahhas: We are working on several packages with specific speed and capacity, moreover for now we don’t have a capacity issue until 2 years ahead, the problem lies in the prices. The cost is divided between the international capacity and the main depreciation of the equipment, in addition it depends on the quantity of users that will register in this service.

Minister Charbel Nahhas: Usually worldwide the cost of 3G is 2 times higher than DSL.

Minister Charbel Nahhas pointed out that the prices for GPRS are illogical and don’t make sense, he said they will not be pricing 3G in proportion to the current GPRS prices. Instead he indicated, while gesturing a balance with his hands, that the 3G prices will be very competitive with DSL, just a bit higher. And once people will start subscribing to 3G more and more, DSL prices are bound to drop. He added that if all goes according to plan the 3G service will be available by September 2011.

Minister Charbel Nahhas watching Ontornet Mugshut video

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post with more details about what’s holding DSL back, the love triangle and the current Telecommunications ministry status.