Posts and telecommunications have long played an essential role in Lebanon, a small country with an expansive diaspora, a vivid media landscape, and an economy geared toward trade and banking. The sector's history has nonetheless been chaotic, marked by conflict but also, and perhaps most importantly, a deeply rooted legacy of state control, weak competition, and intense politicization. A combination of poor services and high prices culminated in popular protests against the government's attempt, in October 2019, to tax the widely used messaging service WhatsApp. The anger this measure triggered captured a more general sense of dissatisfaction, and contributed to tipping the country into a protracted crisis. Civil unrest coincided with Lebanon's default on its ballooning debt; in the ensuing economic collapse, telecommunications have been among the infrastructure most affected.
Telecommunications in Saudi Arabia have evolved early in the Kingdom since the establishment the Directorate of Post, Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) in 1926.
Telecommunications infrastructure in South Africa provides modern and efficient service to urban areas, including cellular and internet services. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is the watchdog of the telecommunications in the country.
This article concerns the systems of telecommunication in Austria. Austria has a highly developed and efficient telephone network, and has a number of radio and television broadcast stations.
In telecommunications, cable Internet access, shortened to cable Internet, is a form of broadband internet access which uses the same infrastructure as cable television. Like digital subscriber line and fiber to the premises services, cable Internet access provides network edge connectivity from the Internet service provider to an end user. It is integrated into the cable television infrastructure analogously to DSL which uses the existing telephone network. Cable TV networks and telecommunications networks are the two predominant forms of residential Internet access. Recently, both have seen increased competition from fiber deployments, wireless, mobile networks and satellite internet access.
The Internet in South Africa, one of the most technologically resourced countries on the African continent, is expanding. The internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .za is managed and regulated by the .za Domain Name Authority (.ZADNA) and was granted to South Africa by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1990. Over 60% of Internet traffic generated on the African continent originates from South Africa. As of 2020, 41.5 million people were Internet users.
Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
Internet in Brazil was launched in 1988. In 2011 Brazil ranked fifth in the world with nearly 89 million Internet users, 45% of the population. In March 2022, Brazil ranked 33rd in the Ookla Broadband Ranking, with a median fixed broadband speed of 90 Mbit/s. Also, as per December 2021, Brazil had 41,4 million fixed broadband accesses, most of them FTTH. However, as per 2020, most Brazilians access the Internet through a mobile connection, with more than 200 million mobile internet access.
Belgium has well-developed Internet infrastructure, ranking among the top countries in the world in terms of total number of Internet users, fixed broadband users, mobile broadband users, and Internet hosts. Providers typically offer download speeds of 30Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s, and upload speeds of 10Mbit/s to 75Mbit/s. Historically, Belgian Internet providers have imposed data caps on their subscribers, but lately this practice has been disappearing as Belgian Internet infrastructure has expanded.
The internet is an important contributor to Ireland's economy and education. The telecommunications infrastructure in Ireland provides Internet access to businesses and home users in various forms, including fibre, cable, DSL, wireless, Fixed Wireless and mobile. In 2019, 91% of households have access to the Internet in Ireland at home, with 88% of individuals reporting that they had used the internet in the three months prior to interview.
Internet in Moldova is one of the fastest and least expensive in the world. The country ranks 3rd in the world by gigabit coverage with around 90% of the population having the option to subscribe to a gigabit plan. The overall infrastructure is well developed which allows many users to experience good quality services throughout the country. However, despite high speeds and cheap prices, the penetration level is quite low when compared with many EU or CIS countries. In 2018, 49% of Moldovan households had broadband access. In 2015, there were 80 registered Internet Service Provider's (ISP's) in the country, with the majority being local or regional with only a few offering their services throughout the country. Moldtelecom and StarNet are the country's leading providers sharing around 88% of the market. The remaining 12% are shared between other ISPS, like SunCommunications, Arax Communications and others. Almost all ISPs that offer their services across the country have their headquarters located in the capital-city of Chişinău.
The Internet in Greece relied on PSTN/ISDN modem dial-up from 1990 until 2003, when ADSL was commercially launched by the incumbent operator OTE. ADSL2+, VDSL2 and GPON are currently the main broadband standards in Greece. It has 3G, 4G, 4G+ and 5G mobile broadband (HSPA) and a more expensive Satellite Internet access. It also has an extensive fiber-optic network throughout the country.
In Romania, there are 18.8 million connections to the Internet. Romania's country code is .ro. The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states. There were over 600 000 domains registered under .ro at the end of 2012.
Internet in India began in 1986 and was initially available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet in India began on 15 August 1995. American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate Cisco estimated that India will have more than 900 million Internet users by 2023.
Like many developed and developing countries, the Internet in Bangladesh has witnessed significant growth. Although facing many constraints in expanding Internet access and use, development of the Internet and Information Technology are high government priorities. In March, 2021 Internet users in Bangladesh increased to 116 million. On 19 February 2018, Bangladesh started the 4G network service.
The Internet in Pakistan has been available since the early 1990s. Pakistan has about 130 million internet users, making it the 7th-largest population of internet users in the world. Information and communications technology (ICT) is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. In 2001 just 1.3% of the population used the Internet. By 2006 this figure had grown to 6.5% and in 2012 to 10.0%. As of July 2021; the percentage of internet users in Pakistan is 54%, which translates into approximately 118 million citizens having access to internet. Inadequate infrastructure is adversely impacting Internet speeds, encompassing technology, available backhaul, and international Internet bandwidth. This is the primary reason why Pakistan's Internet speed lags behind that of neighboring countries and even some less developed nations worldwide.
Speedtest.net, also known as Speedtest by Ookla, is a web service that provides free analysis of Internet access performance metrics, such as connection data rate and latency. It is the flagship product of Ookla, a web testing and network diagnostics company founded in 2006, and based in Seattle, Washington, United States.
Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. Suitability for certain applications, or technically a certain quality of service, is often assumed. For instance, low round trip delay would normally be assumed to be well under 150ms and suitable for Voice over IP, online gaming, financial trading especially arbitrage, virtual private networks and other latency-sensitive applications. This would rule out satellite Internet as inherently high-latency. In some applications, utility-grade reliability or security are often also assumed or defined as requirements. There is no single definition of broadband and official plans may refer to any or none of these criteria.
Exascale is a British fibre-to-the-building Internet service provider with a Head Office in Telford, Shropshire with presence in a number of data centres and markets throughout the United Kingdom. Exascale is most commonly known to provide high speed internet and point-to-point connectivity to businsses using a variety of access technologies nationally across the United Kingdom.
Map of sea cables (zoom over Lebanon to see all cables coming to the country and managed by Ogero)