February 04, 2011

The TRA is legally mandated to develop the telecommunications market in Lebanon and strongly believes that Broadband dissemination will widely contribute to boost the sector and the national economy as a whole.

In this framework, the TRA raised the necessity of having specific requirements in new buildings to be able to carry Broadband and prepared a document that outlines the requirements to be applied to all newly constructed buildings where exploitation area exceeds 800 square meters or have at least 3 floors. These requirements are not meant to alter or modify the existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) guidelines for basic voice; They have been subject to consultation with related government departments and syndicates and reviewed in detail by the Order of Engineers and Architects – Beirut.

Furthermore, the said requirements have been adopted by the General Directorate of Urban Planning at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation. Accordingly, the application decree for the Building Law 646 will be amended to account for these New Building Requirements. The amended application decree will be submitted to the Council of Ministers by General Directorate of Urban Planning for approval.

As part of TRA efforts to maintain transparency with the public and raise awareness about the subject, and in the framework of its cooperation with the order of Engineers and Architects of Beirut, the authority prepared an article to be published in the Engineer magazine (Issue No. 1 of 2011) issued by the order of Engineers, elaborating the above mentioned needs of the new buildings to carry broadband while summarizing the design requirements for the delivery of broadband services to residential and commercial spaces.