Lebanon eSIM
Orbislo carries traffic in Lebanon on Alfa and Touch. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
- Networks
- Alfa and Touch
- Typical speed
- 28 Mbps typical, 6 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- 4G only
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
What 28 Mbps actually means in Lebanon
Typical download speed on Orbislo in Lebanon: 28 Mbps. That is below the Middle East median of 72 Mbps, so plan around it rather than being surprised by it.
The tenth percentile is 6 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
Maps, messaging, ride hailing and payment apps all work without complaint. Video calls connect but will drop resolution, and streaming is better set to standard definition than left on automatic. Tethering a laptop works for email and documents rather than for calls.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Lebanon on Alfa and Touch. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Lebanon: 4G only. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is throughput rather than a network generation.
Landing in Lebanon
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Lebanon and it attaches to Alfa.
On landing there is one thing to check: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Worth knowing about Lebanon
- A handset brought into Lebanon and used with a Lebanese SIM gets a grace period of ninety days on the network. The ninety days count whether they run together or are broken across separate visits, from the first time the device touches one of the two mobile networks.
- Once that grace period is used up the device stops working on the network until customs duty and value added tax have been paid on it. The payment is made, and the handset switched back on the same day, at any LibanPost office or at the parcels desk of the customs service at Rafic Hariri International Airport.
- The Ministry of Telecommunications keeps a register of handset IMEI numbers, and access to the country's two mobile networks is limited to devices recorded in it.
- Local visitor lines are priced in United States dollars, the quoted prices exclude tax, and a customer on a visitor line may subscribe only to the visitor bundle rather than to the ordinary prepaid range.
How Lebanon compares across Middle East
- Regional typical speed
- 72 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Alfa, Touch
- 5G
- 4G only
- Next fastest nearby
- Jordan, 38 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 1: Beirut
