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I know it’s hard to belive, but the news is true! The ministry of telecommunications is teaming up with the Association of Banks and Sodetel to bring free WiFi to 11 public parks in Lebanon (mainly in Beirut) during working hours.

1. Herch Beyrouth on a surface of 30.000 m2, knowing that its total area is 330,0000m2
2. Sanayeh- René Mouawad (22,000 m2)
3. Sioufi (20,000 m2)
4. Ramleh Bayda  (10,000 m2)
5. Manchiyeh- Tripoli (10,000 m2)
6. Bourj Abi Haidar (7,000 m2)
7. Talet el Khayat – Moufti Hassan Khaled (5,000 m2)
8. Abou Chahla (5,000 m2)
9. Yassouhiyé (4,400 m2)
10. Saint Nicolas (2,200 m2)
11. Basta Tahta (2,200 m2)

Sioufi will be the first park to have the free WiFi starting today when ministers Nahas and Sehnaoui launch the service.

It’s a great initiative indeed. But given the current internet speed in Lebanon, I highly doubt the service will be really usable by the people. I mean we’re barely able to make use of the internet at home, let alone a shared public bandwidth!

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.

This blog post is sponsored by AllBestIdeas.com

What the owners say:

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What Rami says:

What I liked:

• Their friendly online customer service agent. I had a chat with them today pretending to be a customer and they were very helpful.
• The links on the left that make it easy on you to reach what you need to order based on your budget, occasion, theme, or recipient.
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What I disliked:

• Their blog, the posts are not related at all to each other. One post for example is about artificial rain! It should be used to communicate more with the readers. Maybe update them on the upcoming products.
• The overall design of the website. I am no design expert, but I think there’s room for improvement in the website layout.