Update: The 10% extra MBs are only for one month to compensate the loss due to the outage that occurred the day before. (Source: Alfa)

That’s probably the only good news that ever came out of an internet outage in Lebanon. I don’t know if the increase is permanent or just for a month.

The 4G network will only support data at the moment to be followed by calls and SMS by end of June

I tried the 4G SIM on both the Nokia Lumia 920 and Samsung Note2 and I couldn’t get a 4G sign even though I put the right configuration. I don’t know if I misunderstood Alfa’s official statement but they did specify a list of devices that work on the Alfa 4G network during the launch:

The devices that work on the Alfa 4G network are:
1- Lumia 920
2- Galaxy S3 (that supports LTE)
3- Galaxy Note 2 (that supports LTE)
4- LG Optimus g
5- iPad mini

Here’s an excerpt from the DailyStar:

Yet very few smartphones and wireless devices currently sold in Lebanon support the new network and accessing it will come at a high cost to consumers. Alfa CEO Marwan Hayek said at a news conference that 41,000 devices in the Lebanese market are currently 4G, or fourth-generation, enabled, including the Nokia Lumia 920, the LG Optimus G, the iPad mini, and compatible Galaxy S3 and Note 2 models. [DailyStar]

PS: On a side note, thumbs up to Alfa for their improved customer service!

That’s quite an amazing story. I had no clue a Lebanese was behind Pou.

When Yahoo! paid 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio $30 million for news summary app Summly, one of our Wamda contributors wrote us, “I’m looking forward to the day when somebody on Wamda writes the Arab version of this story.”

The story of Lebanese developer Paul Salameh is almost that story. He might not be a teenager (he’s 24) and his app might not influence the future of media consumption, but rumors have swirled that he has been offered $20 million for its acquisition.

“He’s probably making around $30,000 day, by conservative estimation,” a local source told us, based upon estimates of downloads of the $1.99 iOS version and in-app purchases on its Android app. That’s a cool $1 million a month.

For what? Pou. Yes, that’s the name of his app, which resembles a colorful, mobile version of Japanese digital pet Tamagotchi. In Pou, players can feed, wash, and play games with a brown, triangular alien pet, which has turned out to be wildly addictive; the app made a global Top 5 Paid iOS Apps list last month, sees between between 260-320,000 downloads a day on Android, and has so far hit #1 in the iPhone kids games category in a total of 90 countries. [Wamda]

You can download Pou from the [Apple Store] or [Play Store]. To view the article’s full version [Here].

Thanks M!

I just activated my 4G dongle and here are the results of the SpeedTests I did. Coverage is still restricted to few areas in Beirut so

Update: As requested by Razor, here are two speedtest results using Cyprus and Alexandria

Here’s a link to the 3G early results I got during the testing pilot phase back in September 2011.

Prices proposed by Alfa: Is it me or are the new packages really expensive?

Alfa just launched the 4G officially and here are few details shared by Abir and from Alfa. Alfa is the 6th company to launch the 4G technology in the MENA region.

The 4G network will only support data at the moment to be followed by calls and SMS by end of June. I already tried to send an SMS this morning and it failed. The 4G coverage map is restricted to Beirut at the moment as shown below:

via @Alfa

The devices that work on the Alfa 4G network are:
1- Lumia 920
2- Galaxy S3 (that supports LTE)
3- Galaxy Note 2 (that supports LTE)
4- LG Optimus g
5- iPad mini

BB Z10 and Q10 are not currently supported and iPhones are pending licensing agreements. Sending SMS on #Alfa4G network is expected by end of June. Only the iPhone 5 model A1429 will be supported.

Good Job Sareen!

This picture was uploaded yesterday night by Minister Sehnaoui on Instagram with the below text:

I introduce to you Super Geek. A young Lebanese Geek turned Super Hero He’s into high tech gadgets and would pick Star Wars over Politics any day His Mission is to lead the Young Lebanese Digital Lobby to instill change in Lebanon and the World In days to come we will all need to think and brainstorm together to create the Adventures of Super Geek Our fellow Geek @sareen_ak who drew this character to life will help us make this happen We will also need to work together to make Super Geek’s Mission a Reality Share Super Geek with the community so we can have all Geeks on board of our Young Digital Lobby

I am still skeptical about this whole Lebanese Digital Lobby idea and I am not sure how Super Geek’s adventures will be appealing to internet users but I guess it’s a fun initiative for students maybe that can’t do any harm.

This announcement comes with another big event, which is the 4G commercial launch that is set for Wednesday 15th of May. The initial launch is for Limited Locations but will gradually expand to cover all regions. I don’t know whether people will be able to subscribe to the service as of the 15th as we just received few days ago dongles for the pilot phase which did not start yet and will last a whole month.

I will keep you posted once I activate my 4G dongle.

I went to pick up the 4G SIM and Dongle for the test pilot phase today from Alfa’s premises. The 4G SIM won’t be activated though before the official launching date which wasn’t communicated yet but should be soon.

The testing is for only one-month and I will have 10G to try out on the Huawei dongle.

I just got a confirmation from Minister Sehnaoui that the upgrade will take place on May 7th.

What I am unsure of though is what will happen if a user had already exceeded his limit before the upgrade takes place. For example if you have 500 MB and you already consumed 600MB, will the extra MBs be accounted for or will the limits be refreshed automatically?

Picture taken from Tech-Ticker.com via FrootApps

There are 22 million smartphones in the MENA region, 12 million in the Gulf alone. Android has the biggest market share with 40%, followed by iOS with 35%, then Blackberry and Windows way behind.

Check out more information [Here].

Lebanese-American Adrian Aoun, the founder of Wavii – Picture taken from wired

Google acquires a lot of start-ups every year but this acquisition is worth a mention as its founder is a Lebanese-American called Adrian Aoun. You can read more about Wavii on [Mashable] and [TechCrunch].

Famously, Google says it’s on mission to organize the world’s information. And Wavii says it’s on a mission to understand the world’s information. So there’s a certain harmony behind the reports that Google has paid $30 million to acquire the Seattle startup.

Wavii offers a service that lets people to “follow” a subject — such as biotechnology, the Middle East or stamp collecting — in much the same way you would follow a person on Twitter or Facebook. But when the company launched in 2012, founder Adrian Aoun had a grander version, saying he planned to expand the technology at the heart of the company’s service and provide a way for machines to better understand the massive amounts of information posted to the internet with each passing minute. [Link]

This was announced few minutes ago by Minister Sehnaoui.

Update: Here’s a [link] to an article from the DailyStar

I just finished reading the latest statement done by the Minister of Telecommunication Nicolas Sehnaoui and based on what I understood:

- New measures will take place as of June 1, 2013 in order to prevent illegally imported devices & protecting the consumer from counterfeits. All imported devices (Smart phones and 3G Enabled tablets and devices) after June 1 2013 will have to be registered now at Alfa or MTC at the airport otherwise they will not work. This means that if you purchased a new phone from abroad, you will have to register it or else you won’t be able to use a Lebanese SIM on it.

- Knowing that the iPhone is not officially distributed in Lebanon, if the government allows few local dealers to sell the iPhone, it will be at least 25% more expensive due to custom fees and VAT. As for other iPhones, if you activated them and used a Lebanese SIM before June 1, 2013 then you will be safe.

- If you wish to sell your phone, u need to release it by sending an empty sms to 1014 then sell it. Also and I am not sure if I got this properly, but if you have two SIMs, you need to release the phone from the first SIM then register it to the second SIM.

I honestly have mixed feelings about these measures as I worry that even though they might stop smuggling and counterfeit products, but it will pave the way for few dealers to control the market and set their own prices. I read that this might be an advertising for phones with contracts as hinted by Alfa during the Arabnet conference but I am not sure about it.

Thanks Amer for the help!

Picture taken from LebaneseWantFastInternet

I got a call last week from my internet provider (DSL connection) asking me if I was satisfied with my connection at home and their customer service. It went like this:

Operator: Hello, I am calling to see if you’ve had any problems with your internet connection in the past year and if the experience was overall satisfying.

Me: I’ve had few issues at first but I called support and resolved them.

Operator: What sort of issues? Was the connection bad?

Me: At first, the internet would stop working for no reason every few hours. After few days of troubleshooting and doing the tests support asked me to do, it turned out the problem was in the handy phone, even though I had put an isolator from the start. After I replaced the phone, I didn’t encounter any disconnections.

Operator: How about the internet? is it fast or slow?

Me: To be honest, it is barely 1Mbps even though I had requested 4Mbps but as it turns out, my phone line can’t take more than 1Mbps for reasons I could not understand yet. It seems it has something to do with the cable that comes from the “Central” or with the “Central” itself, knowing that I live very close to it.

Operator: This has to do with Ogero I am afraid. You have to check with them. I was only asking if the modem was causing any issues and if you are satisfied with the service.

Me: The modem is fine but I am barely getting 1Mbps so I don’t know if I should be satisfied or not. Anyway thank you for the follow up.

Operator: Thank you sir.

Lebanon ranked 152nd in download speed – Picture via LebaneseMemes

Taking this short chat into consideration, and given the changes that the Telecom Center has witnessed in the past 3 years, one can easily say that we have a better and cheaper internet connection nowadays (and there are numbers to prove it), but at the same time, we are still far from having a fast and reliable connection, and very far from an abundant internet. In fact and due to the lack of a proper infrastructure, a lot of areas outside Beirut and even few areas surrounding Beirut are unable to exploit connections that are higher than 1Mbps. Similarly, the 3G coverage is still relatively weak. On top of all that, phone calls are disconnecting and the network coverage is not that good specially outside Beirut.

Who is to Blame?

It comes naturally to blame the Telecom Ministry and the Government for the unstable internet but it would be unfair to do so specially with Ogero around. In fact and for the past few years, most of our internet problems have been the result of the political bickering between the Telecom Ministry and Ogero, which is ironically 100% owned by the government and supposedly acts under the supervision of the Minister of Telecommunication. However Ogero Telecom chief Abdel-Moneim Youssef does not share the same political views as the previous three Telecom ministers and as a result, every time there’s a problem, each side puts the blame on the other. Ogero claims that it’s struggling financially and that the Telecom Ministry is withholding money from it and breaking the law on several occasions while the ministry accuses Ogero of a lack of cooperation and even filed a lawsuit against them.

I will not bother go into details as to who’s right or who’s wrong because the mere presence of Ogero for me does not make sense. Having a state-owned (privately-managed) entity controlling the Telecom sector is a recipe for disaster and the past years are a clear proof of that. Regardless of political affiliations, it is illogical to let one company control everything and then expect other privately owned ISPs to compete with it. I am not saying Ogero is bad but this monopoly is an obstacle to a healthy competition and should be halted either through privatization or other means. Last but not least, I think more efforts should have been put by both sides to settle the differences as we’ve wasted precious years and are now way behind technologically.

4G Live Test reaching peak of 100Mbits/s – Picture taken by @NicolaSehanoui

Is launching the 4G a good or bad idea?

When the 3G was launched back in 2011, the pilot phase was excellent but when the service became available to all, it sucked for few months before it became relatively stable. A lot of people, including myself, criticized this premature launch but come to think of it, I think this may be the only way to get things done in Lebanon, or should I say the least worse and most effective way in the climate we live in.

What I am saying is that we’ve waited the DSL service for years before it got implemented in a wrong and illogical way. Similarly, the 3G was not expected, yet was rushed and we suffered for a while but at least now we have both services running even if they are way below our expectations. The number of internet users has increased in Lebanon and the demand for a better internet has become a necessity, after it was a luxury with the prices we had few years back (I used to pay 70$ monthly for 2GB download on a 512Kb connection). Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we should settle for what we have right now but we didn’t have to wait another 10 years for Ogero and the Ministry to get along. 3G and DSL are now a reality and whomever takes over will be pressured to improve them or introduce new services. Added to that, whenever something bad happens, like the outage we had last year, both sides will have to fix things quickly and consequently back then, we got hooked to a new international cable. Remember that this specific ministry brings the government billions of dollars in returns yearly.

This being said, I say we should go for the 4G and hope for more outages or problems that will get things moving more quickly. With the internet penetration already at 56% and on the rise, end-users and businesses will make the Ministry and Ogero’s lives a living hell every time the service stops. After all the internet is not like electricity or water as you only have one source so this monopoly that they’ve created will backfire at them.

Picture via MayaZankoul

What now?

The internet was down for around 3 hours yesterday due to an electrical problem, and it was disconnecting all the time today and still is. We should expect major improvements in the next few weeks or months but nothing’s confirmed yet. 4G pilot phase is on but I wasn’t able to get my hands on a dongle to try it out and there’s barely any mention of the distributed dongles, so I doubt that its official launch is anytime soon. The data caps are still ridiculously low and were not doubled as promised by the minister.

Speaking of Sehnaoui, I’ve had the chance to meet with him over dinner and he’s a very pleasant person to talk to. I told him and I said it out loud that he’s doing a much better job than other ministers, despite few mistakes and controversies, but that Lebanon becoming a regional digital hub is an idea that is a bit far fetched and that we should put more focus on schools and universities. Chances that he comes back as a Telecom Minister are slim but I am glad that he decided to go through with the 4G as whomever comes after him will have to make it work and not waste years to launch it.

Until then, we as Lebanese should continue to raise the alarm, make use of the ever growing social media and hope that it will make a bigger difference in the upcoming elections. Keep in mind that internet access has become a fundamental human right in some countries and that a free, abundant and fast internet is what we’re after.

Source via LebaneseMemes

Lebanon ranked 152nd out of 182 countries in terms of download speed, which is a negligible improvement from our position at the rock bottom of the list 3 years ago.

Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, this index compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe. The value is the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles. [NetIndex.com]

As far as Upload speeds are concerned, we are still very poorly ranked in 175th position (out of 182 also).

Check out the full list [Here].

[YouTube]

The Beirut Digital District is a 10-year project that was launched last year. The first building opened is in Bachoura and is 5000m2. Six other buildings will follow and all will be provided with 4G speed and fiber optic internet connections by the Telecom ministry.

Let’s hope the political differences won’t stop the execution of this project. Added to that and like I stated in my submission to the Lebanese Bloggers competition, The Telecom ministry in collaboration with the private sector should fund the creation of internet hubs inside educational establishments (schools, universities) before coming up with districts to the private sector and entrepreneurs.

via Bambi’s Soapbox