Great news to all 3G users! Minister of Telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui announced at NDU today that capacities for all 3G plans will be increased by 50% for the same prices.
It isn’t clear however whether the increase will be immediately effective or it has to wait until we renew the service.
Update:
According to The Daily Star, capacities will increase as of May 1st. Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui claimed on twitter that capacities will increase as of May 7th.
According to this article in Annahar today, telecom minister Nicolas Sehnaoui announced that live 4G tests will start on Novemeber 16 at Beirut Digital District, and the service will be commercially launched on April 23rd 2013 in selected areas.
It’s definitely about time we get 4G, but I admit I wasn’t expecting we will be getting the service anytime soon given how slow such projects go in Lebanon! I also hope its commercial launch is not going to witness the same mess that happened when we first got 3G.
Anyway, you can read about Sehnaoui’s announcement here and watch him tonight talking about it in Talk of The Town on MTV.
Alfa and Touch both started offering Nano sim cards in Lebanon for those who have already purchased an iPhone 5 or are willing to.
I actually came across Alfa’s announcement through Elie’s blog, and then just saw Touch’s announcement on their twitter account.
If you haven’t yet subscribed to touch’s latest offers allowing you to call one local number for free between 8PM and 4AM throughout the month of Ramadan, then don’t bother trying since they’re no longer accepting new subscriptions according to the above screenshot by AlloFail group on Facebook. As if touch really needed to give people an additional reason to complain more…
I was quite surprised to see the below video shared by @HalaMoubarak today for an ad made by Absolut Vodka back in 2007 and looking very similar to the ads currently running for touch’s new campaign “In My New World“.
To me, In My New World was basically among the two most interesting campaigns this year along with Lebanese Brew’s Try Something Brave, now let’s hope the latter doesn’t turn out to be yet another inspired campaign as well!
No matter how good or bad their service is, I just love MTC Touch’s 3G ads!
It turned out that the price reductions I posted about yesterday are really coming and will be targeting owners of prepaid phone lines. According to this article from The Daily Star, MTC Touch is releasing 3 new recharge cards tomorrow for its Magic prepaid lines:
Given that there will be no hidden charges, MTC Touch is offering up to 36% reduction over the current rates ($0.39/min) and Alfa is supposed to follow a similar pricing. Pretty good in my opinion though the calling rates are still considered very expensive compared to the rest of the world. I just hope some day our government stops relying on this sector to fund its treasury and leaves the two operators to really compete on prices and services.
Next on the list is launching of the 3G service, let’s pray for it to arrive on time too!
Update:
Alfa also published the new rate plans for their prepaid lines which are now called “Waffer”. Thanks to Bechara.
The news below is from Assafir newspaper of Friday June 10 2011.
تخفيضات جديدة الأسبوع المقبل
«الاتصالات»: 3 ملايين مشترك في الخلويأعلنت وزارة الاتصالات ان نسبة الاختراق في الهاتف الخلوي بلغت حتى تاريخه 75 في المئة من مجمل المقيمين في لبنان، بارتفاع بلغ 30 في المئة (نحو 700 الف مشترك جديد) منذ نهاية العام 2009.
واشارت الى ان مجمل عدد المشتركين تجاوز عتبة الـ 3 ملايين بفعل الاجراءات التي اتخذتها الوزارة، لجهة توسعة الشبكات وخفض التعرفات، اضافة الى تقديم عروض جديدة، ومنها ما سيجري إطلاقها الاسبوع المقبل وتتضمن تخفيضات اضافية تتراوح بين 25 و50 في المئة على الكلفة الفعلية التي يتكبدها المواطنون.
من جهة اخرى، استقبل وزير الاتصالات د. شربل نحاس، في مكتبه امس، رئيس مجلس ادارة شركة ألفا مروان الحايك لمناسبة حصوله على جائزة رجل العام 2011 للاتصالات في العالم العربي.
وقال الحايك: إن هذه الجائزة ثمرة الجهود المبذولة بين وزارة الاتصالات وشركة «ألفا»، والتي أدّت الى احداث نقلة نوعية في قطاع الخلوي، تمثلت في اطلاق عروض جديدة وزيادة نسبة الاختراق وخفوض في التعرفات، والاهم بدء العمل الفعلي لادخال خدمات الجيل الثالث والمتوقع ان يتلمسها المستخدمون منتصف هذا الصيف.
Seems like the ministry of telecommunications is promising 25-50% price reductions on some mobile services this week. Let’s wait and see, and while waiting let’s just hope this won’t require some further approvals from any other party!
A new ad for MTC Touch about their “Friends and Family” service is all over the radio stations now. This new service allows prepaid users to select 2 of their most dialed numbers and call them at 30% less.
That means if you were to fully use the $25 card (which actually gives you $22.73) to call your 2 preferred number, you’ll be able to speak 90 minutes instead of 63 minutes. ($22.73 / ($0.36 * 70%) = 90 minutes)
However, what wasn’t advertised is that this service actually has a cost of $3! And they probably did it that way in order not to allow everyone to benefit from this offer.
Anyway, this means you now can’t subscribe to this service unless you speak a minimum number of minutes with your 2 preferred numbers that are enough to cover the service fee and then start saving money on your remaining calls, so let’s calculate this minimum amount.
Let “T” be that amount, then: $0.36 T * 30% = $3 –> T = 27.7, i.e 28 minutes.
And of course if you were to fully use your card to call your preferred number, the total number of minutes drops to 78 instead of 90. That means the decrease is in fact 23.6% instead of 30%!
Couldn’t they have just advertised a decrease of 20-25% instead of playing smart on their customers?
Update:
Alfa (The second mobile operator in Lebanon) turned out to have launched the same service and is advertising for it as well, with the same fee.
Still, to be fair with the two companies, I have to mention that MTC Touch and Alfa JUST manage the two mobile networks, and to my knowledge do not any control over the rates or the offered services and their fees, it is actually the ministry of telecommunication that controls all of that.
