Telecommunication activity in Lebanon kept on posting improvements in 2014. In fact, and after revealing a noticeable progress in the usage of telecommunication services, Lebanon saw an advance over the year to rank 62nd globally and 6th amongst the Arab countries in terms of developing ICT indicators. However, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) pointed out that the country witnessed a marginal decline in the indicators of ICT’s infrastructure and accessibility.
In details, the penetration rate of landline services in Lebanon stood at 20% just below the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and ahead of Bahrain (18%) and Qatar (16%). On a positive note, the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications (MoT) slashed prices on international calls through landlines by 50% in April 2014 and those on local calls between 33% and 50%. In July, the MoT canceled initial subscription fees on fixed lines and decreased the monthly payment fees by 25%.
In terms of mobile lines, Lebanon is still well below the regional penetration rate of 133% standing at 93% in the 3rd quarter of 2014. Worth mentioning that Lebanon’s penetration rate of mobile services takes into account the number of Syrian refugees residing in the country. Accordingly, the rate will steeply decline to hover around 70% when taking into account Lebanese nationals alone; as the registered Syrian refugees touched the 1.5M by the end of 2014, almost constituting one third of the Lebanese population.
The broadband market was also on the rise in 2014 with more than 60% of mobile users subscribing to mobile internet services. It is worth mentioning that the average real internet speed stood between 1.6 Megabytes (Mb) and 3 Mb, while the average monthly usage reached 19 Mb per subscriber. The improvement of this sector mainly resulted from the decision of the MoT to slash tariffs in June 2014 and launching 3G and 4G new internet generations’ services.
Evolution of the Information Technology Market Size
Source: Business Monitor International