Telecommunication Minister Boutros Harb Tuesday inaugurated new switchboards in north Lebanon’s Batroun district as part of a fiber-optic network. While touring the area, Harb said he aims to place Lebanon at the top in terms of Internet bandwidth.
“This is the first stage of implementing the 2020 project,” Harb said from Kfar Abida village. The project will “transfer the Lebanese from the [era of slow Internet] to a more developed one that would put Lebanon at the forefront of countries operating an advanced Internet and mobile networks.”
Harb claimed that the average user only needs about 2 Mbps, but that the planned project will increase capacity to 84 Mbps. The world’s fastest peak Internet speed is 135.7 Mbps in Singapore, according to a report from Akamai, an Internet content delivery company.
Harb was accompanied by the head of the state telecoms company Ogero, Abdel Moneim Youssef.
Last month, Harb announced that the fiber-optic network is functioning and has been extended to large institutions.
When Harb became minister in 2014, the country’s fiber-optic backbone connecting major switchboards to each other and large institutions was already largely complete. However, work was reportedly stopped at the new minister’s initiative.
Harb said that the current installation of fiber optics is part of the 2020 strategy he launched in July of last year. According to that plan, fiber-optic networks are to be installed in Lebanon progressively over five years, with the goal of connecting the entire country by 2020.