However, it doesn’t seem like this sufficient for us to enjoy the newly offered packages. According to this excellent article by Matt Nash from Executive Magazine, the real problem now lies in the copper wires connecting our homes to the central offices. Apparently, these wires can handle transferring a maximum of 8Mbps given that you live near the central office in your area, and the speed of course decreases as the distance to your home increases.
This is in fact so bad that basically around 1/3 of internet users in Lebanon cannot get more than 2Mbps to their homes since they simply live too far away from a central office!
So I believe the biggest challenge facing the ministry right now is upgrading the existing infrastructure which can cost up to $1 billion if we decided to go for optical fiber. And until then, the maximum speed we are able to get will remain much less than what average users enjoy in other countries of our region.