These Are Lebanon’s Upcoming New DSL Plans

Yesterday, head of Ogero Imad Kreidieh announced on his Twitter page (link) the upcoming DSL plans which are still awaiting our government to ratify in order for them to be operational. We’ve actually been waiting for over 40 days as Mr. Kreidieh had previously imagined the plans to be functional starting April 1st.

However, as it is with Lebanese governance, anything that could serve to improve our quality of life in such a way got delayed, as our politicians bicker over that new electoral law which they won’t be able to come up with. At this point, figuring out the existence of parallel worlds is easier.

In a series of tweets, Imad Kreidieh said that most of the new plans won’t feature any speed limits which means you get the speed that your line can handle.

This is a double-edged sword: while it’s good to know that some of us might be getting more than the 2Mbps we currently get, any future problems we might face could then be blamed on the quality of our copper lines.

However, as I’ve asked Mr. Kreidieh on Twitter back when the “Unleash The Speed” campaign was underway in different areas of Beirut, the speed that your line got on that day is the speed you’d get under normal conditions once the new plans are implemented. I personally got 12Mbps back then and would be happy to get that much on a daily basis.

Because of our dying infrastructure, however, the speed that you’ll get is highly dependent on how far you are from the exchange site. A few weeks ago, LBC did a report on the issue from which the following figure was obtained:

Hopefully our government will ratify the new plans soon. Here they are:

• 2 Mbps, Unlimited: 60,000LL.
• 4 Mbps, 40GB: 24,000LL.
• Open speed, 50GB: 30,000LL.
• Open speed, 100GB: 45,000LL.
• Open speed, 150GB: 60,000LL.
• Open speed 200GB: 75,000LL.
• HDSL 100 gb: 100,000LL.

Extra consumption will also be made cheaper: the first 50GB are priced at 1,500LL each, with each GB after those priced at 1,000LL.

I think the new plans are fair. They’re much better than what we previously had, but a far cry from what we truly need. For instance, I have no idea if the new quotas will be enough with the new speeds we’d be getting. Can you imagine how many GBs you’d race through when YouTube decides to automatically load in HD?

I hope that these plans are, therefore, a stepping stone and that we won’t need to wait another 3 years before they get updated again.