As part of the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunication’s 2020 5-year plan, the mobile network Alfa, managed by Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, has signed contracts with Ericsson and Nokia to set up the 4.5G service all over the country. This will boost the grid’s speed from the current 150 megabits per second (Mbps) to 300 Mbps. The project will cost over $600M but it will be fully covered by the budget of the Telecommunications Ministry. Worth mentioning that according to the Telecom Minister, the cost to upgrade the country’s mobile network to 4G ranged between $120M and $130M.
The service will be established by September instead of the end of 2016, earlier than the previously mentioned deadline of end-2016.
According to the CEO of Alfa, Marwan Hayek, more than 30 companies, involving 5,500 individuals, will be working on this project. Hayek also stated that 1,300 stations will be installed all over the country and that annual data consumption will increase to 80,000 terabits by 2020, up from the current 15,000 terabits. The new Internet speeds will allow the use of HD voice and HD video streaming applications, in addition to other applications.
4G Service V/S 4.5G Service
Source: BSE News