Last year during my visit to the MWC2015, I witnessed what a 5G connection looks like at Ericsson’s booth and wondered if we will ever see similar connections in Lebanon. As it turns out, Alfa Telecom is planning to introduce the 5G technology in Lebanon by mid-2018 after signing two Memoranda of Understanding with Ericsson and Nokia to ensure that the Alfa network will be ready for the 5G technology by then.

5G connection at Ericsson’s booth – MWC15

Until then, Alfa is planning to roll out 4.5G LTE coverage on the entire Lebanese territory offering speeds reaching up to 300 mbit/sec as part of the 2020 plan launched by the Ministry of Telecommunications. Touch is also partnering with Huawei and Nokia to make 4.5G available all across Lebanon by September this year.

Alfa signs 4.5G LTE deployment contracts with Nokia and Ericsson in all of Lebanon and two MoUs on 5G

All in all, I can’t complain much about my 3G/4G connection as it’s always reliable and fast (Alfa & Touch). I haven’t had issues for quite some time but my only problem is with the quota especially when you’re always using 4G. We need bigger quotas and cheaper plans right now and we will need them even more when 4.5G becomes available. Also, we need both the ministry to revise the extra consumption because it’s ridiculous (700MB Of Extra Data Consumption Costs As Much As A 10GB).

On another note, DSL connections are still slow. I am not hoping for fiber optics to be rolled out anytime soon but we desperately need an upgrade to +VDSL the soonest.