Lebanon
Immortals Censored in Lebanon
Nov 16th
Yesterday night I went to the movies to watch Immortals with a couple of friends. The movie is good and I guess you’ll like it if you’re into this kind of movies. Here’s the description of the movie from IMDB.
Theseus is a mortal man chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion, who is on a rampage across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity.
In the middle of the movie, my friend noticed that there was a cut in a scene. The music suddenly stopped and a new scene started. A sentence said by a character in the next scene confirmed our suspicion that something was missing and in the end of the movie it became clear that the movie was censored so I decided to download the movie and check if it was true. It is, 2 minutes of the movie is missing in Lebanese cinemas!
Note that there will be spoilers in the rest of the article so keep reading only if you watched the movie or do not wish to watch it.
Unfortunately the censored scene is a key part of the movie. When the virgin oracle helps Theseus recover after he had buried his mother and fought for the bow, and while she is leaning at him the scene is cut in the Lebanese version. In the normal version, they kiss, she then stands up, removes her dress, and join him into bed. At this point her “behind” shows on camera. She then tells Theseus that her visions are a curse and she wants to see the world through her own eyes, her own flesh. We can then see there shadows making love and the scene fades out.
What’s weird about the censorship in this movie is that what is censored normally appears in other movies shown in Lebanese Theaters, so I am not sure why exactly this one was censored. My friends and I suggested 3 theories:
- That’s just Lebanon, consistency in censorship is not required.
- The Oracle should remain a “Virgin” so maybe they somehow linked it to Christianity.
- They just censored it so the movie could be rated PG (Lebanese standards). If that’s true it means the Lebanese censorship bureau (or whatever it’s called) doesn’t have any problem with violence and people killing each others, the important thing is that they should never kiss!
People in surrounding countries used to enjoy watching movies here because they are not censored! Now are movies are started to be censored! I hope whoever censors stuff around here realizes soon that we should be having less censorship (Ideally no censorship, just ratings) as the world evolves not more!
3G Speeds
Oct 10th
The first thing I did when I got my 3G line is enter the speedtest.net application and test the speed of the connection. After those initial test whenever I accessed the app on 3G or even edge it showed me a “Network communication issues” error.
Testing WiFi speeds still worked properly but I couldn’t test 3G speeds in any region. I think alfa might be blocking the testing but I am not sure about it. The good news is that yesterday I finally managed to bypass the block by:
- Connecting and finding a server to test on while on WiFi
- Getting far enough from the router so that the mobile looses the WiFi signal (exiting the app to turn off WiFi kept resetting it)
- Testing the connection on 3G.
The speeds I got from those test were pretty descent, I got speeds between 2 and 3 MB but with high latencies (>200ms).
So for now the 3G speeds are good, let’s just hope they manage to maintain a fast service when it is finally properly launched!
Tested 3G video calls
Oct 5th
Last Friday I got to test video calling with a friend in downtown Beirut. The 2 phones performing the calls were a Nokia C7 and a Nokia E72 both with alfa lines. I was happy to find that the call was successful and we were able to see each others and talk normally. The quality is similar to a crappy webcam picture but there was no lags or interruption so it wasn’t bad. I’ll try to perform a call to an MTC line soon but I’m not sure it would work. Did anyone else try video calls? Did you have a similar or a different experience?
Alfa 3G support
Sep 25th
On the first day of 3G testing I sent an email to Alfa asking them for the 3G settings for my Windows Phone 7 device. The 3G had started working on my android phone but couldn’t connect on the other one. An hour or 2 later I got a phone call from Alfa, the person at the end of the line first asked me if I had tried calling 118 (that’s the 3G support number). I told him I did not, he asked me why, he asked if I had a prior bad experience with them or if I had tried to call them and they had not answered. I told him I had no problem with 118 but I figured that sending an email would be faster and easier for me. The support guy then guided me setting up the phone settings. After correctly entering the data, everything worked perfectly. After that he asked me to call 118 while I was on the phone with him (using my normal line) and see if they answer me. I called them and they did, he thanked me and asked me to get back to him if I have any other issue/remark. Note that while talking to him I told him about the speeds I was currently getting and about the quality of the connection at my location; the call was also followed by another 2 calls about Alfa asking me if my problem was fixed.
At noon the service suddenly stopped working, I tried to call them around 13:00 but got no reply on the first try, on the second one and after a minute of waiting an operator answered the phone and asked me for my 3G mobile number. I did not have the number memorized so I told him to hold for a sec but when I got back to him (after around 40 seconds I think) the line was already disconnected so I then decided to wait and ignore the disconnection since I was busy anyways.
The second day I got a phone call from Alfa in the morning, the person on the other end of the line asked me if everything was OK today since I had complained on the previous day about a non stable service. I told him that I had not complain (I wrote on the blog that speeds varied a lot so I don’t know if they read that) but that speeds were better today but that I did not test it extensively yet. He asked me to test it a little and told me that he would try to call me back in 5 minutes. To test the connection I tried to open 2 YouTube videos, one loaded quickly on the first try and the second loaded quickly but took a little time to start. When he called back I told him everything was going OK. Two hours later I got another call from Alfa, the person also asked me if my complaints from the day before were solved, I told them everything was OK.
So as you can see the customer support for 3G is currently good but lacks organization, I hope they improve that side of it before the full launch. How good/bad was your experience using 3G?
No 3G testing this week
Sep 24th
I will not be able to keep testing the 3G connection this week since I am in Abu Dhabi on a business trip. The line is currently with my brother so I’ll give you his feedback when I am back. I still have a couple of posts to write about my experience when using 3G so I’ll try to post them when I have time.
Egypt gets 2,250 Megawatts for 300 million $, Lebanon pays 1.2 Billion $ for 700 Megawatts
Sep 22nd
A friend of mine shared this link on Facebook, can anyone explain the huge price difference?
CAIRO, Sep 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — –GE-Led Consortium Wins Expansions at Giza North and Banha Power Plants, Projects Will Add 2,250 Megawatts
–These Contracts Constitute the Largest Power Generation Order Between GE and Egypt
GE has signed contracts totaling US$300 million to supply six gas turbines and associated services to the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company for two new combined-cycle power plants near Cairo that will support Egypt’s rapidly growing energy needs.
My first day using Alfa 3G in Lebanon
Sep 21st
Today I started using the 3G service I got from Alfa, I won’t make a judgement on it yet since I was very busy and I barely managed to use it but the speeds were a little slow when I did test them. I did not use it for browsing yet and the only app I used was whatsapp so I didn’t see any improvement in this area.
I contacted customer support via mail today and they called me back, they were very helpful and I’ll make a post about that on another day.
Here’s a small list of results I got from the speedtests (using speedtest.net app for android)
- Sin El Fil, 08h26, Down 119 kbps, Up 336 kbps, ping 131 ms
- Sin El Fil, 09h15, Down 41kbps, Up 370 kbps, ping 211 ms
- Sin El Fil, 09h15, Down 609kbps, Up 382 kbps, ping 211 ms
- Naccache, 20h24, Down 311 kbps, Up 166 kbps, ping 329 ms
Reception in Sin El Fil is a little bad indoor (1-2 over 5) and good outside (3-5 over 5) but I managed to make good quality phone calls indoors and outdoors. In Naccache it’s good with a full reception outdoors and an indoor reception similar to the one I got outdoors in Sin El Fil.
I am currently using the connection to download app updates on my phone and they are downloading faster then usual so that’s a good sign! I got to go watch the latest episodes of How I met your mother and 2 and a half man now but I promise you I’ll keep updating you about the connection as I test it!
Alfa 3G coverage map and other info
Sep 20th
Here’s a scan of the flyer I got with my Alfa 3G line. In the second page you can see the different regions in Lebanon that will be covered by 3G in the testing phase.
I got an Alfa 3G SIM card!
Sep 20th
Today I attended the SMW Beirut event at the Mar Roukoz campus of USJ. During the event the minister of telecommunication launched the 3G service in Lebanon on a limited bases just for testing. At the end of the conference a draw was made to select 25 students from each mobile operator to test the service and I got lucky and received a SIM card from Alfa!. In total 4000 users will test it, 25% will be students and the others will be randomly selected from the population.
So for the next month I will be testing 3G in Lebanon and updating you guys here and on Twitter (@eliedh).
I have a 3GB data cap on the service and I according to the flyer I should expect speeds up to 21.1 Mbps.
The person distributing the SIM cards at the end of the conference told us that the 3G will start working tomorrow. I already placed the SIM card in an HTC Mozart phone (running windows phone 7). I got a 3G signal and I was able to call it from my other line but the internet did not work. I’ll try it later tonight on an HTC Hero (running android).
During this month I’ll try to test the connection on as many devices as I can and use as many services as I can.
Here’s a list of the devices I plan to test on (I have the devices marked in bold and can get quick access to the others):
- HTC Hero
- HTC Mozart
- Nokia N8
- Nokia C7
- iPhone 3GS
- iPhone 4
- iPad 3G
- LG Arena
- LG GD900 Crystal
- Sony Ericsson Z610
- Nokia E72
- Samsung Ace
- Samsung Galaxy S
- Samsung Galaxy S2
- Samsung Wave
Note that I did not check if all the devices support the technology used by Alfa so I’ll check before testing each one. I’ll also try to use the tethering option on devices that support it. In addition to that I might get a USB dongle to test it on my Macbook pro and on my windows laptop.
The services I use on a daily basis on my mobile are the following: Whatsapp, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook. During the testing period I’ll try to stream some videos to the mobile phones and perform a speed/ping test on every device/region. If I get the chance I will also try to place a Video call (but during the conference I heard that it does not work yet so I’m not sure about it).
I hope the service works correctly and that we can finally have decent internet in Lebanon, I’ll make sure to inform Alfa about any problem I might encounter since this is a testing period and hopefully 3G will be available to everyone soon.
If you have any suggestions or questions please share them in the comments.
Lady Gaga new album banned in Lebanon
Jun 6th
According to lebanonfiles.com Lebanese authorities banned the new lady gaga album in Lebanon “because it harms Christianity”. That will surely help because you know everyone buys music legally on CDs in Lebanon…
