BEIRUT: Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui announced Tuesday plans to boost the country’s high-speed Internet capacity to 33Gbit/s and said he submitted to Cabinet plans to reduce the charges of extra consumption on DSL usage.

Sehnaoui, who spoke at Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK), said Internet capacity had been upgraded substantially since his taking office and unveiled further plans to boost capacity by 10Gbit/s from the present 23Gbit/s.

“You will recall that 10 months ago the capacity was 3Gbit/s for all of Lebanon and we were able to add 10Gbit/s that we used up completely. Then we recently added 10Gbit/s and we hope to add a further 10Gbit/s in the coming weeks,” Sehnaoui said.

“Thus Lebanon will have moved from 3Gbit/s 10 months ago to 23Gbit/s at present and within a few weeks to 33Gbit/s, or 11 times as fast in a span of around a year,” he added.

He also said he submitted to the government Tuesday a request for amendments to the tariff decree governing DSL.

One amendment seeks to grant all DSL subscribers to Ogero – the semi-autonomous company responsible for administering telecoms in the country – unlimited nighttime usage between 12 a.m. and 7 a.m.

Sehnaoui said he did not believe the Cabinet would turn down the amendment.

The other amendment aims to reduce the charges on those exceeding their download quotas, or “extra consumption.”

Those exceeding their quotas would, if the amendment is approved, be charged for the price of 100 MB rather the 1GB, which is the pricing scheme at present.

Sehnaoui also said Cabinet’s agenda Wednesday would include an item about linking Lebanon with Cyprus through a new international cable, which could benefit Lebanon with an additional 700 Gbit/s of capacity.