Unleash the speed

ENAR

During five days in April, Lebanese internet users were given proof that their notoriously terrible connections have been kept that way on purpose. Lebanon had become a laughing stock. Back when Ookla – the US-based operator of the ubiquitous speedtest.net – offered public rankings of average internet download speeds by country, Lebanon was always near the very bottom of the list. With the rankings no longer public, it is hard to reliably say where we stand today, but we do not really need an official ranking to know typical Lebanese download speeds of 1 to 2 megabits per second (mbps) are pathetic. Last month, the publicly owned gatekeeper of Lebanon’s internet – Ogero – conducted five days of speed tests in different parts of the country. The results were jaw-dropping. The company’s new director general (appointed by the cabinet in January) claimed on Twitter that some users reached download speeds