Tag Archives: Internet

Unlimited Night Internet Now Available in Lebanon

I just received a text from IDM notifying me that my DSL will become unlimited from 11 pm to 7 am every day. The decree, which minister Nicolas Sehnaoui announced was in works more than a month ago, was published in the Official Gazette last Thursday.

Ogero customers were immediately able to benefit from the service. Some said the website still showed that they were charged for the quota they used at that time. Minister Sehnaoui subsequently replied to some users on Twitter that they won’t be charged and that the website will be updated soon.

I asked minister Sehnaoui when other ISPs would offer this service and this was his reply to me.

It seems Private ISPs got their bandwidth quite fast. I’m not sure about other ISPs but I think they most probably have it as well. Here’s the text I got from IDM.

Instead of my account info showing me the typical: Your line didn’t pass the feasibility test for unlimited nights, I currently get the following:

I really hope the speed doesn’t become unusable at 11 pm. But yes, this was much needed. I can finally get those 80 app updates waiting for me out of the way. Infinity Blade 2 is just such a nuisance, don’t you think?

Alfa and MTC Introduce New Blackberry Services: Cheaper and Less Features

After minister of telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui announced on Twitter that he will be making new announcements on April 30th, I was interested in what he was going to say.

The news is for Blackberry users, however decreasing they may be. No, the service has not been made cheaper as people are saying. No, you don’t simply pay $8 for the 200MB you used to pay $24 for. Instead of having one blackberry service now, called Blackberry Internet Service (BIS), Alfa and MTC  have introduced two other plans: Blackberry social ($8 for 200MB) and BlackBerry complete ($12 for 200MB). The original BIS plan has been upgraded to $24 for 500MB.

You can see all the details here:

For BlackBerry Social, you can’t add other chatting services nor can you activate email. For BlackBerry complete you get to activate one email account.

I really don’t get the point behind this. They want new users? What’s the purpose of the 5 other mobile data plans that both carriers have, then?

1) Why is the 500MB for BlackBerry still more expensive than the 500MB for regular mobile data?

2) Why introduce new plans when there are room for improvements in the original one to begin with? For most BlackBerry users, 200MB per month is more than enough (their phones are not exactly data heavy). Why not cut the price of the original plan, which has way more functionality?

As Twitter user UxSoup said, the more suitable name for this would be BS Social.

In other news, I’m still waiting on the unlimited internet at off-peak hours.

La Wloo!!… How To Be a Lebanese Journalist/Blogger Know-It-All

This is a reply to the La Wlooo!!! column at BeirutNightLife.

It starts when you go to college and get a degree. This degree is the key to everything. Just because you have a degree in biology doesn’t mean you can’t discuss psychology and just because you have a BA in psychology doesn’t mean histology is out of reach. It’s all under the umbrella of knowledge.

And what better way to make yourself known that to express your all knowing self?

So it begins: the process of becoming a Lebanese journalist, blogger, writer, what have you, know-it-all.

1 – Find a platform:

You can start your own platform and express your exquisite level of knowledge all you want. What’s better would be to go around and search for a website that desperately needs your knowledge in order to generate debate and thus, website hits. That way, you won’t have to start from scratch and you can propagate your expertise regarding everything to a wide range of audience. They, as in the masses, are gullible. They will eat up anything you write about and help spread it around like there’s no tomorrow.

2 – Talk about anything:

Men and Facebook? How they’re gay for saying “looool?” – what an exquisite idea. You can write an op-ed about that. Women wearing strapless bras? That’s internet gold right there. Mini-skirts, showing cleavage? You betcha! A SEO-friendly title would help. How about you bring in the Arab hits as well? Let’s see… you can write: LEBANESE GIRLS HAVING SEX. That’s sure to get their attention, now wouldn’t it?

3 – Your opinion is fact:

Don’t let people tell you otherwise. After all, you know it all. Anything you know, they simply do not and they simply cannot *insert appropriate meme because they are hip these days* be correct while you are wrong. Therefore, you need a high-horse to climb. Then on top of that high-horse, add a pedestal. Because you’re that in these days. You’re also very high off the attention. Why not take it literally? The people are commenting en masse. Most of them agree with your all-knowing self. You are on cloud 9. You are on top of the world.

4 – Don’t Let Anyone Bring You Down:

Some other fake know-it-all come around and try to tell you off? Just shrug them off as haters. Write a sarcastic article about how they got you to crawl on your bathroom floor and weep. Then tell them off because that is exactly what a true-bred Lebanese know-it-all like you should do. While bashing their heads off, you can also blast Kelly Clarkson’s Mr. Know It All to get you in the mood of it. “Baby, you don’t know a THING!” you will sing to the screen while your fingers bang on your keyboard.

5 – Use Vulgar Language:

An article is never complete without dropping terms here and there that will get heads rolling. You know it all so there’s no way that such terms can be considered offensive. When you talk about hoes, you’re doing so because they are hoes – no way around telling it like it is. Those that don’t understand that are simply not enlightened enough. Vulgar language is here to serve your all-knowing self. And it will definitely make your article more appealing to the reader. There’s nothing more than a read filled with your grotesque depictions of people. You must shock people in order to get your point across. To talk about mini-skirts, you must use the language of those mini-skirts.

6 – Point Out Your Wittiness and Sarcasm:

Many of those miserable non-know it all readers will feel your article degrading and demeaning. After all, they cannot but be dimwitted lovers of those whom you’re talking about. So you must conclude with an italicized disclaimer that your article was sarcastic. People are just not on your level of intellectual capacity to know that your articles are reeking of social sarcasm at a situation you find peculiar. Besides, you don’t want to let people feel you’re attacking them personally now, you know, just in case.

“This is how it feels to be schooled in the art of writing a respectable satirical article”

IDM Unlimited Nights: Fail!

I had a DSL subscription with IDM for the whole year last year. I had to stop it during December because I moved out of my Achrafieh house and my grandparents didn’t need it.

I had unlimited hours from 11 pm to 7 am that I used extensively and it was great. However, I recently called IDM to install a subscription because the need for internet in the Achrafieh household arose. While discussing the details, I asked if I get unlimited nights and they said yes. So naturally, I subscribed to one of the smaller packages offered because I wouldn’t need a big quota if I can get unlimited quota at night.

5GB per month it was.

I activated the DSL this past Sunday and behold, I don’t get unlimited quota. IDM was closed on Monday so I called on Tuesday and apparently they hadn’t discussed unlimited nights with me. I was making stuff up. And if I had asked them, they would have told me they couldn’t offer it because the “central” didn’t have enough open ports anymore.

So now to get unlimited internet at night, I either have to wait two or three weeks until the governmental decree goes into effect. And if that doesn’t happen, which you know is very likely in Lebanon, I’ll have to cancel my subscription and re-apply again, hoping I’d get a port. It’s a matter of luck apparently.

The saga doesn’t end with me. Twitter user Rabih faced the same thing with IDM while installing DSL at his house in Bsalim. He filed in all the paperwork and went to make sure he got unlimited nights. They said no. So he told them he didn’t want a subscription anymore. They replied that they’d see what they can do.

A week later, IDM contacted Rabih telling him that they have secured a port for him and that he will be getting unlimited nights. However, once his DSL got installed, he didn’t get unlimited quota. The reason? They didn’t activate his port because everyone would be getting unlimited nights in a month.

No, we’re not nagging for the sake of nagging. When an area supposedly has the option to have unlimited night hours, you don’t expect some people to get such a thing and others not to, depending on how lucky they are. Either everyone gets unlimited night traffic in a certain area or no one does.

How much sense does it make that my neighbor in Achrafieh, who lives less than 20 meters away and who shares the same central has unlimited night hours and I don’t? How could they actually tell you: Oh we’ve run out of ports for you. Sorry. You pay the same amount as everyone else in your area except you don’t get to use the internet as much as they do?

Lebanese companies taking their customers lightly and treading on them needs to stop. What’s worse? They actually had the audacity to tell me that I haven’t really paid much so I shouldn’t nag. So dear IDM, if I had paid $1 to get a service you advertised, I expect to get that service. As a company that respects itself, you need to get a grip.

The Best April Fools’ 2012 Pranks

That day is behind us – the only day of the year when you can get away with as many pranks as you can. I was lucky enough not to have fallen for any practical jokes this year. But these are the best ones that I’ve gathered from around the internet.

1 – BBC’s: We Are All Dead

2 – Google’s 8-bit maps:

3 – Forbes’: Romney Drops Out of GOP Race

This piece has caused a frenzy and reached the top of Google news shortly after it was published. People had only read the headline and started spreading it, making it go viral. It was immediately taken down but you can still read it here.

4 – Kodak: Print Your Own Kittens:

5 – Toshiba’s New Laptops: