Cyberia and IDM are changing their unlimited night internet policy and turning it into a paid service starting May 2015. The aim of this new policy is to limit the abuse of a small number of users during peak hours and try to improve the internet speed for everyone else. IDM & Cyberia users will now have to pay an additional $3 or $6 to enable the unlimited night feature.
Of course this is not the ideal solution as internet is supposed to get cheaper and become more abundant, but the problem is the lack of the bandwidth and the never-ending feud between the government and Ogero. If we believe what Executive Magazine reported last week, “the country has a new, multi million dollar fiber optic network that forms a backbone for data traffic. It is laying idle, however, because a few switches needed to pass information have not been flipped”. So basically there is a way to fix the internet problem in Lebanon but some people don’t want to.
Going back to the Unlimited Night feature, Ogero had already removed it last year and replaced it with an unlimited option. I’m not sure how things are going for Ogero users after midnight but I don’t think what Cyberia and IDM did will improve the internet’s speed drastically.
The Arabic version of the announcement for both companies says:
اعتبارا من 1 نيسان 2015
(As of 1 April, 2015)
We’ll stick to the English version 🙂
the GENIUS minister has prices last summer without upgrading the national bandwidth FIRST since then the internet has become terribly slow, how thoughtful of him
so lets assume that there was a problem between sehnaoui and abdel men3em youssef, now that the current minister and abdel men3em youssef r in the same political alliance it seems that the minister himself is not doing his job he should have upgraded the network BEFORE lowering prices last summer
ma7ad y2elli enno mesh bi 2eedo el shaghleh
+1 Rob
I work at one of these two companies. The idea was indeed to improve the service as there was an abuse at night leading to slowness. The bandwidth problem is from the ministry, as we’re not able to get enough bandwidth (from the ministry) to be able to better serve the users. I am in no way defending the company or whatever, but the slowness problem is indeed because of the ministry, not the private companies.
There are cases where slowness is because of the distance between the user and the CO (central office) where his line is connected. When it’s copper line (as is now) every 200 meters leads to more slowness. That’s why the majority of Lebanese ADSL users can’t receive more than 1M speed (although some receive up to 8M).
The problem here will be solved once the fiber optic network is put to use 🙂
And when is FTTX getting launched?
I ordered dsl service from IDM over 2 month ago. Till now no service although i was told 5 days ago I am now connected. I complained and was told we are investigating and will get back to you and dont ask when because it could be us or Ogero. Between the 2 you could expect this to last forever. What a great service….
It seems to me Ogero wants customers to give up on competitors and competitors have no mean to pressure Ogero to give them adequate service. When Minstry brags about opening the internet market take this with a grain of salt. What i dont understand is why those private companies cant form a lobbying body to force Ogero to behave as they should.