Last day I got a phone call from a gentleman in MTC Touch telling me that I will be granted the 3G service for a 1 month free trial period, and so right now I’m among the lucky people who got to participate in the pilot testing of this service in Lebanon. An yes I’m so excited about it!!
The service got activated at around 1PM today on my phone and didn’t require any special configuration to run. I randomly started loading websites and found the connection to be pretty fast compared to home ADSL and the crappy GPRS. Below are two tests done using speedtest.net after I shared the connection with my laptop.
As you can see, download is @ 1.7Mbps which is superb compared to the current internet speeds, while upload is varying between 0.11 and 0.22Mbps. Ping is of course higher that it is supposed to be, and I hope it’ll improve soon. Note that I was in Beirut central district at the time of this test, and I guess speed might vary depending on your location.
3G subscriptions will be available for both postpaid and prepaid lines, and data transfer will be limited to 4GB/month. It isn’t clear tough how much will the operators charge for it.
I’ll hopefully be posting more updates on the connection quality and speed throughout this trial period.
Mabrouuuk! 🙂
Awesome! Congrats 🙂
Mabrouk ! 🙂 3a2belna
i don’t belief until i see in my own eyes .
Mabrouk Lebanon ! Now your cellphone are going faster than your DSL connexion 😀
PS : 1.7mb/sc is very good for a download, here in France i’m around 4mb whith a good signal and with less than 1mb with a poor reception (most of the time). But it’s the same for the upload, and being stuck with 0.22 .. aouch .. ! Ask them to arrange that !
nchala nekhlas ba2a w yjiboulna hal dsl el sari3 🙁
Well Done Rami 🙂
Can I just clarify something. 1.7Mb/s is actually 212 KBp/s download. Which in itself is amazing! But for Ekios your connection is actually 32Mb/s, which as you can see is way larger than Lebanon’s.
In any case congratz! and that is one hell of an improvement over the 0.5kbps that edge was! Still can’t believe that this is actually happening!
@Ribal
Ekios probably meant 4Mbps..
And yes, the current 3G speed is definitely awesome, I hope it’ll remain like that after offering it to the public.
@mark
Dude, if you’re the one who copied the content of this post to http://www.lebspy.com/forums/showthread.php?p=26970, you could have at least mentioned the source!
Congrats , I wish i could have this privilege as well 🙂 anyway i’m so excited to see 3G live for public. I’m only scared about the PRICE and the Quotas!
Quota sucks
Speed sucks compared to home internet (the speeds that are coming i mean)
if the prices are not cheap, i expect 3G failure simply because simply because DSL is faster and cheaper, and will be more available and faster at wherever you work in beirut.
even if its 40$ per month, and i think it will be more than that, but even at 40$ per month it wont be worth it.
Nononononoooo !! Sorry for the delay I expected to get warnings by mail when new comments would fall here !
So here in France when i’m on a good area (most of the time it’s 50% or 25%) i’m able to download around 350ko per scd to 450ko per seconds. In NO CASE we have 32Mb/S on our cellphone ! Even my DSL box is “only” giving me 10Mb/S (1200/1300 Mo per scd)
And only 110ko per scd in upload :-/ which is lower than my cellphone which gives me the same amount in DL or UL.
So your download by 3G is excellent !! Now you only need to push it to get something … “real” in upload because 0.22 … oh man … even for chatting it will be stressfull ..
PS : here, we are now waiting on the compagny “Free” to release its mobile prices at the very begining of 2012 :))
We are expecting something like 20e* per month for full illimited phone call sms mms and internet on the cellphone. The other operators are peeing in their pants for other a year already 😀
If Lebanon wasn’t so “dangerous” I’m sure that would have try it too, they are very good 🙂
*(if you are already with them for the internet/phone/Tv box otherwise it’s 30e)
Hi Rami, I got the same offer and mine was activated tonight at 8:00 pm but I still cannot open websites because, according to the gentleman , I had to change the apn (access point name). My mobile is an old I-mate JASJAR which supports 3G, but they couldn’t send me the settings to my phone, they said they would send it to my e-mail and still they haven’t . can you just check out the apn for me it should be something like xxx.mtctouch.com.lb (I need the xxx part). you’ll be very helpful.
@kokotor
it shows gprs.mtctouch.com.lb
thnx
Hey guys 1- mabruk for lebanon bass when can we get it as regular costumers on our cellphones? ana MTC w i have an HTC Desire HD
yeah bas 1.7 mb is crappy considering that only 4000 users are using it right now .. ask yourself what is it going to be when 50000 users are using that service .. maybe more.. i think we need more time to experience real time 3G that other countries have .. bas still its an improvement from the EDGE and GPRS .. bas i heard tonight eno mesh mrakhas lal alfa wala l mtc ywazz3o 3g service so ymkin tekhoud a while before we actually see it
Dear Blogger,
We’re happy to inform you that your blog is featured in our latest issue of Communicate Levant, now available on the market.
Check it out and keep up the good work.
3G….working..at last
3G maybe, but for better aDSL connection your are all good to wait after 2012 … that country will never change damnit !!!
Well congrats 🙂
But let’s see if the speed will remain the same when all these users get activated XD
I have a 512kbps internet connection. But most of the time it connects at lower speeds. When it’s already connected, even more bandwidth is available, still it stuck at previous speed. I have to unplug the modem and re connect. Only after that the new speed appears. Is there a way to force the modem to connect at 512kbps all the time? I use a USB ADSL Modem. ADSL Router users doesn’t have this problem.
It is actually a great and useful piece of information. I’m glad that you shared this helpful information with us. Please stay us informed like this. Thank you for sharing.
like to be part
well so nice,so cool.i really love this