On Site: Computing in Lebanon

I still find it difficult to suppress images of spring 1986. While the Lebanese civil war raged, a taxi driver and I made our way through the Lebanese countryside under a hail of bullets and shells to Beirut’s airport. After collecting my passport and visa—brought to me by a brave motorcyclist from the opposite side of the line separating the warring militias—I caught my first flight to the U.S. where I would be educated for my part in a pioneering computing program in the American University of Beirut’s Department of Mathematics. (Back then, the program’s workbenches were IBM PCs with 8086 processors, and a Digital Equipment VAX 3500 and a Sun Microsystems workstation connected by an AppleTalk network.)

While I was away, the war continued, leaving the local Lebanese computer industry, among other industrial sectors, in limbo. In 1990, I left again, this time for Sydney, Australia. After earning a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Technology, I returned in 1994 to contribute to the national reconstruction process and to the American University, where the computer labs now have specialized workstations and servers, including Silicon Graphics, Sun SPARCs, Macintoshes, and PCs running Windows 95, NT, and Linux. All these computers are linked through a local-area network connected to the University’s backbone and to the Internet.

Today too, an American University student can earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science and continue toward a master’s degree or enroll in the engineering school for a bachelor’s or master’s in computer engineering. With well-regarded academic standards, the ability to transfer credits from and to U.S. universities, and relatively low tuition, the University is becoming an attractive option for English-speaking students from around the world. Researchers too might want to visit the University’s Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences, which uses Digital Alpha- and Pentium-Pro-based systems.

In Lebanon today, almost all the computer action is in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, which combined account for less than 25% of the country’s territory. Add the fact that the total number of Internet users in Lebanon is approximately 30,000 in a population of about 4 million. So for computer vendors around the world looking for business potential, Lebanon is the place to be.

Human resources represent the scarcest commodity in the local computing industry. Since cessation of the civil war in 1992, the country has had a tremendous need for computer professionals to help create a new information infrastructure capable of helping the country (once viewed as the Switzerland of the Middle East for its banking and business connections) regain the role it once played. Moreover, the few professionals available today are already claimed by local industry and the government, leaving many sectors in need of expertise to engineer their technology and support their information needs. Several international consulting firms have made inroads in the Lebanese market, charging about $1,500 per person day, compared to a rate of $150 for local experts with comparable qualifications. An international expert can therefore earn up to $10,000 to $30,000 per month. Taxes are marginal.

The need for computing experts in the local job market spans almost all industries, including banking and insurance, as well as various governmental agencies, such as ports and education. For example, only a few banks have their own computing departments or have installed ATM machines.

Ready-to-use commercial software packages are another scarce commodity in the Lebanese market, with few companies developing advanced database applications, and represents a prime opportunity for international software vendors. The cost of an application acquired out of the country compared to its locally developed counterpart is about 10 to 1. Despite these costs, imported solutions for banking, insurance, human resource management, health care management, and other areas remain attractive for organizations keen on a quick upgrade. Imported solutions also open new avenues for consulting and programming contracts.

Solutions for small businesses are handled by local programmers or local programming businesses or groups. A typical solution costs about $1,500 (developed in, say, FoxPro, Access, or even Cobol) with contractors anticipating longer-term maintenance contracts. However, please note that, except for Web page design using Java and pilot implementations in Oracle 8, Beirut does not yet share the worldwide computing community’s euphoria for object-oriented technology.

There is no hardware manufacturing in Lebanon. PCs are either packaged inhouse by a local vendor or imported, although most Lebanese home computer users have confidence in the local hardware market due to the attractive prices (less than $1,000 for a locally packaged Intel Pentium II-based machine), along with low-cost maintenance and upgrades. Such imported brands as Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Micron go for about $1,800 and are favored by business users.

E-commerce would open new avenues for employment and consulting. So, supported by private funds, the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture of Beirut and Mount Lebanon recently launched a nationwide project to implement electronic data interchange under the auspices of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. The Chamber, through its Article Numbering Association for Lebanon, already regulates bar-code licensing.

Meanwhile, from an almost-nonexistent state of telecom services only a few years ago, the recent rebuilding of the Lebanese communication infrastructure has brought in modern technology and reconnected Beirut to the world. Consequently, Internet service providers have emerged, despite the heavily regulated market, under the auspices of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication. One prominent example is Sodotel, a joint venture of the Lebanese government, France Telecom, and Italian Cable. Sodotel uses Liban Pack, an X.25 packet-switch service provider, certified by the Ministry of Post, Telegraph and Telephones. Other ISPs use TCP/IP, delivering transparent connection to servers in international locations worldwide through international lines. However, the connection rate averages $3/hour or a flat $35/month.

The Global System for Mobile Communications flourishes today in Lebanon, helping put tens of thousands of mobile phones in Lebanese hands. The Lebanese mobile market is shared by a joint venture of Cellis (private Lebanese, 33%, and France-Telecom, 67%) and Liban Cell (private Lebanese, 86%, and Finnish, 14%) on a build-operate-transfer basis to be turned over to the Ministry in 10 years, or 2004. The rates for local calls are as low as 7¢/minute to offset the cost of acquiring a line ($500) and the set, which can run as much as $1,000 for state-of-the-art Ericcson, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, and Siemens sets.

It has been almost four years since I returned, almost six years since cessation of the civil war, and Lebanon has been catching up on many aspects of computing technology. For example, a new regulation, recently adopted by the Ministry of Education, obligates computer literacy at all levels of the country’s school system. Software and hardware vendors are establishing themselves in a competitive market. The World Bank is helping build a new computing infrastructure for the public sector by way of the Ministry of Administrative Reform established in 1997 for that purpose. The Central Bank of Lebanon, as the principal owner of the national air carrier Middle East Airlines, is helping revive the company along with its information technology component. And companies in Canada, France, and Italy have begun to establish themselves—all significant steps toward introducing Lebanon to the information age.

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