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Lebanon's Internet providers press government to expand fast broadband: Cisco program manager warns pricing, speed vital for economic growthBEIRUT, Oct 29, 2009 (The Daily Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Cisco program manager Salam Yamout criticized on Wednesday the high costs of Internet services in Lebanon due to lack of competition in "a partially liberalized market." "The prices that we pay in Lebanon for Internet services are unacceptable. In Paris, which is the most expansive city in Europe, the user gets Internet, cable television and telephone services with a 12MB per second speed for only $45," Yamout told The Daily Star. "In Lebanon, the individual user pays $70 for a speed of 1MB per second," she added. Yamout said that one of the main reasons for this increase in prices is the lack of competition with Ogero since it is the only market player. "If the market is not transparent, open and competitive, then there will be not enough synergies between the different players to give the consumer a better service for a lesser price," she said. Yamout said that the government has a major role to play. "The government needs to understand that broadband today is a vital interest for economic growth in Lebanon. They have to take measures by liberalizing the telecom market and facilitating the access to internet services," she said. Her remarks came during the Middle East Network Operators Group (MENOG) meeting which was held at the Movenpick hotel in Beirut. The meeting, which was hosted by IDM and Ogero, gathers 250 professionals representing 106 organizations and companies coming from 29 countries to discuss the critical internet issues affecting the Middle East region. According to IDM general manager Therese Khairallah, the idea behind the conference is to discuss the implementation of the new IPV6 technology. "In the US and Europe they are ahead of us in the implementation of IPv6. In two years we cannot run without having IPV6," she said. IPV6 is the next generation of IP addressing. Designed to account for the future growth of the Internet, the pool of IPV6 addresses contains 340 trillion unique addresses. This huge number of addresses is expected to accommodate the predicated growth and innovation of the Internet and Internet-related services over the coming years. "All countries are preparing for the transition to IPV6. The predictions are that IPV4 and IPV6 are going to coexist until 2011 and then IPv6 will be used alone," said Yamout. Among the other issues to be discussed during the five-day event is the expansion of Beirut Internet Exchange Point (IXP) which was built a year ago in Lebanon. An Internet exchange point (IX or IXP) is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers (ISPs) exchange Internet traffic between their networks. "If I am sending you an email while I am an IDM user and you are a Cyberia user, my email would go to New York or London and come back to Lebanon if IXP is not used. With IXP the information is transferred to you via Beirut IXP which is much faster," she said. Yamout said the availability of an IXP in Beirut will lead to delivering better services to clients. "The cost saving the ISP can get by using IXP can be translated later into savings which will benefit the customer. They will be having better margin to work with and will be able to compete," she said. Ogero IT director Toufic Che-baro gave a presentation including figures about the broadband usage in Lebanon. "Despite the fact that the DSL services cost in Lebanon is too high compared to other countries in the region, there are currently 130,000 users subscripted in the service," he said. "We expect to be having 400,000 DSL subscriptions after two years." "The average speed of broadband is expected to reach 1.5MB per second in two years compared to 256kb for the time being and Internet traffic will hit 40 GB per second," he added. To see more of the Daily Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailystar.com.lb. Copyright (c) 2009, The Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |