During a press conference yesterday in the presence of representatives of the mobile telephone operators in Lebanon, Alfa and Touch, the outgoing Minister of Telecoms Johnny Corm took stock of the improvements observed in the sector since the increase in the tariffs of the telephony at the beginning of July.
This increase took place when the tariffs had not been changed since the outbreak of the economic crisis in Lebanon in 2019 and were still calculated at the official rate of 1,507.5 Lebanese pounds for one dollar, although the local currency has lost almost 95% of its value during this period. As a result, the value of the revenues received by the companies in the sector had dropped considerably, leading to considerable losses for these companies and degrading the quality of their services.
At the end of August, two months later, “Lebanon has gained 27 places in the ranking produced by the company Ookla, which measures the speed of internet connections, and it is placed in 76th place out of 140 countries”, the minister said yesterday. Concretely, the average download speed increased from 17.16 megabits per second (Mbps) in June to 25.35 Mbps in August, while the ministry’s goal is to reach a download speed of “28 Mbps” a he continued.
On the other hand, the Ookla company notes a deterioration in the level of the fixed broadband Internet connection over this same period: the average download speed has fallen from 7.67 Mbps to 6.72 Mbps in two months, causing Lebanon to lose 5 places. , now 167th in the world out of 182 countries, compared to 162nd at the end of June.
For their part, representatives of the mobile operators Alfa and Touch indicated that their biggest operational challenge today lies in supplying their power stations with electricity, which directly affects the coverage and quality of services. Salem Itani and Jad Nassif, respectively CEOs of the operators Touch and Alfa, have indicated that their companies are currently managing to provide telephone coverage over 86 to 88% of the territory, while their teams are doing what is necessary to bring this ratio to 95. %.
During a press conference yesterday in the presence of representatives of the mobile telephone operators in Lebanon, Alfa and Touch, the outgoing Minister of Telecoms Johnny Corm took stock of the improvements observed in the sector since the increase in the tariffs of the telephony at the beginning of July. This increase had taken place when the rates had not been modified…