NNA - Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehanoui on Thursday asserted Lebanon's capability of being the digital economy's core in the Middle East.



Sehanoui represented today President Michel Sleiman, House Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the inauguration of the 2013 Arabnet conference held in Hilton hotel, Beirut.



The two-day conference is organized by the LCB, supported by the Telecom Ministry and co-organized by Bank Audi.



In his word delivered on the occasion, Sehnaoui projected to have the Lebanese creative people invade markets with their digital commodities.



Tackling Lebanon's goals set for the telecom modernization strategy, Sehanoui said two key aims were to be reached.


The first, was to make Lebanon the key digital platform of the region and the second, was to develop the country's infrastructure so that it would, in 2015, be among the leading countries in that respect.



"To achieve this strategy, the government has allocated major investments for development and modernization. It adopted the International Gateways network (a telephone number through which calls are routed to get cheaper rates on international long distance charges or to make calls through voice over IP (VOIP) networks internationally) and the IP/MPLS (a network which is packet-switched that uses the Internet Protocol (IP) enhanced with the (MPLS) Multi-protocol label switching)," he explained.



Sehnaoui added that the Alexandros fiber optic marine cable was also a step included in the aforesaid strategy, which has upped the Lebanese internet capacity to 700 GB.



ArabNet is the hub for digital professionals and entrepreneurs to connect and learn.



Its activities aimed at building the web industry and supporting entrepreneurship in the region include: an annual summit in Beirut, widely acknowledged as the largest digital gathering in the MENA region, with a track record of bringing globally-renowned speakers to discuss the latest topics in the field, as well as successfully connecting entrepreneurs and startups with funding and incubation through the Ideathon and Startup Demo competitions.


======================L.W.