A significant number of Lebanese citizens have reported a sudden halt in their postpaid mobile phone lines and/or a lengthy lack of coverage for mobile networks in the past few days.
“Haven’t had network connectivity the past 6 hours – no phone signal and internet even outside of our building,” @katana_lb tweeted, tagging the social media account of the national mobile network operator Touch.
This was on Monday, June 8th. In the couple of days that followed, many similar complaints began to surface online from subscribers experiencing prolonged mobile network outages and other serious technical issues.
“No service”
While the telecommunications company has been engaging with its frustrated subscribers on Twitter, promising solutions, connectivity issues continue to arise for many subscribers who continue to take their annoyance to social media.
Lebanon’s other mobile network operator, Alfa, also received some similar complaints in the past few days, though they appear to be less significant.
In addition to these issues, Lebanon24 reported that numerous citizens have been facing expiration problems with postpaid lines, predominantly for Touch subscribers.
People have reportedly told the media website that their lines “stopped and expired without any prior warnings from the company.”
They explained that when they went to pay for and reactivate their lines, they found that the company had shut its doors, “which is what caused the lines to stop and the interests of the customers to be disrupted.”
Considering that many Lebanese are currently working from home and relying on the Internet to do so, the disruption in the local mobile networks has been all the more irritating.
It’s worth noting that Touch has been facing a serious existential threat recently due to the shortage of diesel fuel at its stations.
In fact, this threat extends to the entire Lebanese telecoms sector, and that became clear when 5 cellular towers went off the grid yesterday.
