Lebanon is a country in the Middle East with a population of over 6.8 million. There are many refugees from Palestine and Syria in the country, foreigners from India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, the Philippines work, there is also a Russian-speaking diaspora. At the same time, tourism industry is well-developed in Lebanon. All these are prerequisites for the generation of large volumes of international traffic. You can make big profits by working in Lebanon in the field of VoIP termination. Let us consider the local market features in more detail.
Mobile penetration in Lebanon is 75% (about 5.1 million connections). There are 2 operators on the cellular market:
- Touch.
- Alfa.
Both GSM operators are state-owned, but are run by foreign telecommunications companies. They have good GSM coverage in the country, pretty high quality and reliable service. It is unlikely that you will encounter the problem of the lack of signal if you locate your gateways in Lebanon.
Keep in mind that Lebanon has the highest prices for mobile services in the region. Due to government control, the two operators have similar rates but Alfa’s rates are slightly lower. Recently, the service providers have slightly reduced the prices following the government’s requirement. At the moment, the basic prepaid SIM card in Lebanon costs $3 and you immediately get an initial loan for the same amount on your account. However, in addition you will have to pay 10% taxes. Thus, a SIM card will cost you only $0.3. By the way, until recently, the starting plans in the country used to cost $25 each.
As for the cellular communication itself, the standard cost of a minute of a call is 25 cents, which is expensive for termination (with the rate of $0.085-$0.09 per minute). Fortunately, the operators have package offers with which a minute of call will cost about $0.003.
To buy a SIM card, you must present your passport first, while the operator can call you back to confirm your identity. Therefore, we recommend establishing cooperation with a supplier of SIM cards registered to someone else before locating gateways and free voip gateway software in Lebanon.
