Category Archives: Telecom

04.30.13
by

9474

Article posted in Cloud961 issue Cloud #0 May 2103 http://www.cloud961.com & @cloud961mag

June 1st 2013 is a new date for the Lebanese telecommunication sector, on that day a decree number 9474 by the government restricts the access to both national GSM operators on all handsets by authorized IMEI numbers only will be executed.

The above sentence might be gibberish for non-technical reader that is why this article won’t be a technical review; it won’t be a political stand and not even an opinion. After reading several articles, the official decree itself and listening to what Minister Sehnaoui had to say on the announcement day I have compiled a series of questions and thoughts hoping to get answers from Minister Sehnaoui himself, who’s personal message to me whiling to meet and discuss them all yet it was never scheduled.

Before sharing my thoughts on that decision I will explain some technical words and definitions to make it easy on all of us:

IMEI: international mobile station equipment identity, just like a car VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) it’s a hard to fake serial number unique for each mobile device, phone or tablet. You can always find out your IMEI by pressing *#06#.

Gray Market: it will define the status of a mobile device “smuggled” into Lebanon through the legal harbors and channels, has a clean import manifest but the “smugglers” managed to skip paying Customs fees and VAT as per the law.

Brands: opposed to gray market, are the authorized dealers and distributors for the international mobile manufacturers in the Lebanese market and import their products through the legal harbors and channels, pay Customs fees and VAT.

National Operators: Alfa and touch operating the notional mobile network.

Personal: will be used to describe any device bought and brought from abroad on a personal level and for personal use oppose to mass import for business use.

The road map for this decree execution is 2 month, after June 1st all Brands should declare their imported IMEI handset numbers through a legal document, those numbers will be added to the official IMEI database managed by the Ministry of Telecom, Personal devices should be also declared by registering them, only declared and registered IMEIs will be allowed to access the national mobile network, excluded all IMEIs active on roaming numbers. (Full process will be published soon on national operators’ websites) to make it simpler, if your phone bought after June 1st doesn’t get a network signal it means it’s a gray market product, you can’t use it in Lebanon.

My thought as following, sharing them and still hoping to get clear answer:

1. What guarantees will assure a proper application of the Personal registration process, knowing that 3G phase and most telecom related projects are a mess in execution and results?

2. The gray market devices are getting in the country through the legal government controlled harbors, why not stop them there and avoid unnecessary time consuming procedures to the end users by declaring and registering their products?

3. If gray market “smugglers” are that well protected, untouchable and capable, what are the guarantees that they won’t “smuggle” their IMEIs numbers into the national database?

4. Do the Lebanese consumers deserve because of this decree at least a 20% rise in prices, in the absence of other alternatives such as buying contract phones?

5. Mobile phone testers, bloggers, technical people will have a certain “free pass” to be able to test unlimited number of units or also restrictions applies here?

6. What are the measures to protect the national database, who as access to it?

7. Is the limitation to the Personal imported devices (3 per user every 6 month) applied on politicians, deputies and diplomats?

I will settle with these thoughts for now, until we receive the proper answers, the application of the decree and the mess it’s going to create in the telecom sector is yet to be witnessed after June 1st and with every law in this country come exceptions and sometimes the exception might eliminate the whole law, seen it before and will see it in the future with the absence of a transparent implementation.

Amer Tabsh

03.16.10
by

Lebanon to get additional internet bandwidth from India

Monday, March 15, 2010
Lebanon to get additional internet bandwidth from India
Government to buy 45 gigabytes for $45 million in coming months

By Dana Halawi
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: The Lebanese government is planning on buying an additional 45 gigabytes of international internet bandwidth for $45 million in the coming few months said an IT expert on Sunday.

“The Ministry of Telecommunications announced that the additional bandwidth is expected to reach Lebanon in the month of May but I think that this will not happen on time because of the difficulties encountered by the Lebanese government with the Egyptian intelligence service,” Riad Bahsoun told The Daily Star.

Bahsoun, who is the general manager of the Telecommunication Information Technology in Lebanon, explained that the new bandwidth will come from India via Egypt, through a submarine cable that will reach Tripoli. “There is no problem whatsoever with the cable but the only problem is with the whole system which is supposed to pass by Egypt before reaching Lebanon,” he said. “The Lebanese government did not solve the security issues with the Egyptian Intelligence; however Saudi Telecom is helping out with this issue.”

On the other hand, Danial Hamadeh, who is a senior spectrum expert at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), commented on Bahsoun’s remarks, saying that he does not believe a problem actually exists with the Egyptian intelligence service because a lot of Arab countries already receive bandwidth via Egypt gateway using IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe).

Hamadeh explained that IMEWE submarine cable is an ultra high capacity fiber optic submarine cable system which links India and Europe via Middle East. He said that IMEWE is the international gateway and these cables serve as the principal internet connections between the Middle East and westward on to Europe and North America.

Lebanon has long suffered from a low speed broadband connectivity and this is negatively affecting the flow of investments to the country. Many foreign investors are reluctant to establish businesses in Lebanon due to the lack of proper internet connections and to the high-priced internet services which affect their production capacity.

One of the best examples in this area, according to Amer Tabsh, a professional technical adviser, is the lack of support offered by the government to Google Inc. in delivering their services from Lebanon.

“Google has offices all over the world, but if you dial their office numbers in Lebanon nobody answers since they were unable to place their servers in our country,” Tabsh told The Daily Star in a previous interview. Tabsh explained that their main servers are not available in Lebanon and the website address ‘www.google.com.lb’ operates from Jordan because of their low cost of internet services.

Bahsoun said that this step would be an extremely important milestone for Lebanon in terms of society transformation. “The entire society will migrate to an information society. You can have the best policy in the world but if you don’t have enough bandwidth then you have nothing,” he commented. “It will absolutely decrease internet services prices.”

Bahsoun said that this step will only be successful if the administration makes use of it in a good way. “They must establish a new system of bandwidth distribution to ISPs in addition to imposing on them new prices policies that are suitable with the demand of consumers,” he said.

Bahsoun said that Today 1 megabit of internet bandwidth is consumed by 40 users. “If the government receives this additional bandwidth then in 2012, we will be 12 users using 20 megabits of bandwidth and the fee per month will go down from $90 to $30,” he said.

Bahsoun explained that when a user subscribes to a 512kb connection, he is only using a fraction of it. “You only use a fraction which is 1 out of 40 because they sell the same fraction to 39 others since they don’t have enough bandwidth,” he said.

Article Source: DailyStar

03.09.10
by

BIS 3.0 Upgrade Scheduled for EMEA March 14th

It looks like Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are getting the BIS 3.0 upgrade this weekend. This is a highly anticipated BIS upgrade because it will bring 2-way Gmail sync and other changes.  The update is expected to arrive during a scheduled maintenance for March 14th.

BlackBerry Internet Service v2.8 upgrade to BlackBerry Internet Service v3.0

Impact: BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages, use the BlackBerry Internet Service web site, or perform activities such as creating new accounts, accessing their Internet mailbox, integrating third-party email accounts, or viewing email attachments during the maintenance.

Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers during the maintenance. [0214]

Ticket Number: BBCHG45911
Change Window Start Date and Time: 14 March 2010 4:00 AM Beirut Time
Change Window End Date and Time: 14 March 2010 8:00 AM Beirut Time
Estimated Duration of Service Impact: 4 hour(s)
Subscribers Affected: 100% (estimated)

11.02.09
by

The 9th Global Symposium for Telecom Regulators. The Program

The “9th Global Symposium for Regulators” (GSR) conference taking place for the first time in Lebanon. Scheduled from Nov 9th to 12th 2009 with allot of important guests and speakers coming from all over the world.

Attached is the program and more information about the guests speakers, panels and moderators.

If anyone is interested to attend and blog from there please let me know.

Download Program: GSR Program or here.