By SubTel Forum
An overhaul in Lebanon's telecoms infrastructure, including upgrades to the broadband network over the next 16 months, will generate up to $500 million in new investments, the country's telecoms minister said on Monday according to Reuters.  In its current state the network lags far behind others in the region, with high-priced services, limited Internet capacity and slow connections, all of which have discouraged investors from establishing businesses in Lebanon. A $41 million contract has been awarded to Lebanon's Consolidated Engineering and Trading, with France's Alcatel-Lucent acting as subcontractor, to cover the civil works and fiber deployment in the first round of creating the fiber-optics network. The ministry has also upgraded an existing submarine cable that links Lebanon and Syria to Cyprus. The introduction of 3G services should be operational in the first half of next year.