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More on the data requested by the Information Branch

By on December 5, 2012 in Lebanon

I just noticed Elnashra has published some classified communications between the interior miniter Marwan Charbel and prime minister Najib Mikati showing the data the Information Branch has requested following the assassination of General Wissam El Hassan.

In all of those documents the Information Branch is requesting the below types of data from the two mobile operators in Lebanon (Alfa and Touch), while there’s no mention of any ISP such as Cyberia, IDM, and the alike.

  • List of websites we visit along with all the information we submit to these websites including usernames and passwords. (It’s relatively difficult to obtain these information if HTTPS is enabled)
  • Copies of exchanged e-mails and chat sessions.
  • Recordings of calls made through VoIP applications.
  • List of downloaded apps.
  • Call detail records
  • SMS records.

So unlike what has been circulating in the past few days, and judging from the content of these communications, the Information Branch is only interested in data logged by mobile operators and not ISPs. In addition, there was no explicit interest in obtaining Facebook credentials as the media was reporting.

Anyway I still find it disturbing to know that mobile operators might not be only keeping track of visited websites, but also of submitted information, e-mails, chat sessions, and even VoIP calls recordings! And it seems like they’re really doing so since the telecommunications minister never claimed those records do not exist and instead is just rejecting the Information Branch’s requests.

P.S: I found it weird that some communications were dated August 18th 2012, and got received by the office of the prime minister on the same day, even though they’re requesting data from the period starting September 13th 2012 and ending November 10th 2012. It’s like asking for data from the future!

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4G soon in Lebanon

By on November 1, 2012 in Lebanon

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.

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Alfa Midline

By on August 21, 2012 in Lebanon

More info about Alfa Midline here, it’s not clear though whether 3G can be activated on it or not.

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Alfa Sunday promotion

By on February 29, 2012 in What the fuck!

Alfa’s latest promotion is more like imposing a ridiculous entrance fee at a discount store. Why should people pay $1/week to benefit from a 40% discount on local calls during Sundays?!

Knowing that a minute costs $0.36 for prepaid users, you’ll be saving $0.144 for each minutes, and therefore you will have to speak a minimum of 7 minutes to cover that $1 you initially have paid ($1/$0.144=6.94), so you won’t start really saving until after you have spoken the 8th minute.

Bravo Alfa! Keep the good promotions coming!

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Waiting for Godot

By on December 16, 2011 in Lebanon

The government always succeeds to leave us on our tiptoes waiting for the “next big thing” to solve the problems with our cellular networks.

It started with the poor service following the expansion two years ago, then the absence of 3G, and now the whole mess they got themselves into after introducing 3G! Thus the need for $110 million now to enhance the two networks and eventually put an end to the problems in 8 months.

“I am happy to announce to the Lebanese that the National Quality of Services for the cellular networks will put an end to the poor mobile services. This plan will take eight months to be completed. But the Lebanese will feel the positive results in two to three months. Today I have signed the appropriate investment decision which will allow the two cellular companies, Mtc Touch and Alfa, to start work on this big project,” the minister said. Source

I wonder what are we going to anticipate next!

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Cedarcom wants to suspend 3G in Lebanon

By on September 28, 2011 in Lebanon

Do you remember back in March how the guys at Cedarcom pretended to be fighting for a faster internet in Lebanon and gathered more than 40,000 fans around them?

The same guys are now working hard to take us back to state zero by suing the Ministry of Telecommunications for launching 3G! And it might be just a coincidence that the new service can go much faster than their Mobi, which they themselves have admitted it cannot go beyond 1Mbps, at a cheaper price. You can read more about the issue in The Daily Star and Al-Mustaqbal.

Now can someone tell me what were the real goals of their campaign for a faster internet?

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Here’s to launching the 3G service in Lebanon!

By on September 20, 2011 in Lebanon

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.

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MTC Touch slashes calling rates for prepaid lines

By on June 14, 2011 in Lebanon

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:

  1. Start: Priced at $10 and has 30 talking minutes (Rate is $0.33/min)
  2. Smart: Priced at $16.6 and has 60 talking minutes  (Rate is $0.27/min)
  3. Super: Priced at $30 and has 120 talking minutes (Rate is $0.25/min)

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.

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