Good news for people in Lebanon hoping to watch YouTube without the constant disruptions by mid-viewing downloads:
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.
[…]
[Riad] 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.
So what does that mean?
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.
The question is, how long until it happens? Though I don’t think that Bahsoun is taking into consideration the growth in consmers by 2012. Will 45GB be enough?
RT @LebanonNewsURS: Speeding Up Lebanon’s Snail-Net http://jadaoun.com/blog/2010/03/15/speed…
Speeding Up Lebanon’s Snail-Net http://jadaoun.com/blog/2010/03/15/speed…
Hmmm thanks for the tip… 3ala amal ill farajj…
.-= Tarek´s lastest blog entry ..Out of my Control =-.
I think it’s the best solution coz connection is so bad.
I am ashame to declare that I am a heavy user of internet 20/24 and still using dial up connection. No DSL in the region I do live in, ten kilometers of fiber optics are required…
And we’ve been waiting for more than a year…
Thank you all for your comments. I have to agree, Internet in Lebanon is in a very sad state. Not only do we have low international bandwidth but the availability of broadband services (and I use the term broadband ever so lightly) across the entire country is non-existant.
You know its bad when you get complaints from your own mother that its taking forever to open her Farmville on Facebook!
What guarantee do we have that the israelis won’t disrupt the service in the next war? It’s going to run through international waters… conveniently close to them.
Regardless, it’s about damn time… this is truly pathetic!
Well of course there are no guarantees, this is Lebanon. You cant even guarantee that you will wake up tomorrow and you’ll have electricity. We could always take a page out of Hezbollah rulebook: you hit our airport, we hit yours. You cut our undersea cable at Tripoli, we will cut yours at Haifa.