Summary

  • The TRA’s account of 15 submissions describes broad support for regulatory certainty, open access and wider geographic coverage, while recording disagreements over licensing, investment protection and public infrastructure.
  • The unresolved test is not whether policy says “open access”; it is whether another provider can order capacity on clear terms from networks whose infrastructure owner may also compete for retail customers.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) held an FTTH workshop on 1 October and published its preliminary account on 10 October. It says the 15 submissions broadly favoured predictable rules, open access and expansion beyond urban centres. Participants differed on how to license networks, protect investment and use public infrastructure. Those are the Authority’s summary of consultation responses, not a vote on one model. (TRA workshop account)

The consultation is closed, but closure is not adoption. The TRA’s licensing paper labels itself a public-consultation draft, version 1.00, dated 12 August. A separate consultation-history page says the process has passed; it does not publish a final policy or award a licence. The distinction matters because much of the machinery remains unsettled. (draft policy; consultation history)

The draft sets out two routes. Existing data-service providers, alone or in a consortium, could submit three-to-five-year rollout plans and use passive infrastructure associated with the Ministry of Telecommunications or OGERO, under open-access terms and the existing 25% revenue-sharing obligation. Alternatively, new national or regional FTTH access licences could be competitively assigned, although the selection method is left open. The TRA says consultation could support another option. These are proposals, not current entitlements.

The draft also leaves OGERO in two positions: a retail service provider and a wholesale infrastructure provider. It asks how open access should work, when it should begin, whether urban and rural networks warrant different treatment, and whether limited investment protection could help high-cost areas. At the October workshop, a roundtable proposed reviewing capacity allocation, wholesale access and separation of OGERO’s retail and wholesale activities. That is a proposed review, not a finding of misconduct or a decision to separate the functions. (TRA workshop account)

The Lebanese National Human Rights Commission has argued for a hybrid public-stewardship approach, with stronger attention to resilience, data protection, universal access and rural coverage. That is the Commission’s position; it should not be attributed to all respondents. Its response also cautions against adopting either draft option unchanged. (Commission response)

Numbers in the draft need the same discipline. The TRA reports that the 2018 programme was only partly completed and that a 2026–2030 programme anticipates more than $100m and about 668,000 homes passed. These are reported plans, not verified connections or wholesale orders. OGERO’s public FTTx list is likewise a deployment plan, not address-level proof of availability. The optical-fibre deployment guidelines remain consultation material too. (OGERO plan; guidelines draft)

Heng Lu’s Note 71, “The Policy Mirror,” offers a limited editorial prompt: read a draft for the institutional roles it assumes, without treating that reading as evidence about Lebanese law. Here, the draft’s dual-role model and the workshop’s proposal to review it expose a choice still open. The practical test is whether final rules become wholesale products that competing providers can order and use. Until the TRA publishes adopted terms and operating evidence appears, “open access” remains an objective with unresolved mechanics.

Sources