Touch (stylized as touch; formerly mtc touch) is a Lebanese telecom company and one of the two

mobile telephony Mobile telephony is the provision of wireless telephone services to mobile phones, distinguishing it from fixed-location telephony provided via landline phones. Traditionally, telephony specifically refers to voice communication, though th ...

and

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

operators in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

, alongside its rival

Alfa Alfa may refer to: Businesses and organisations Broadcasting * Alfa Radio, a Macedonian radio station * XHFAJ-FM, a Mexico City radio station better known as Alfa 91.3 * Alfa TV (Cypriot TV channel), a premium television service available in ...

. It is owned by the Lebanese government, and was, until May 2020, operated by the

Zain Group Mobile Telecommunications Company K.S.C.P. (doing business as Zain) is a Kuwaiti mobile telecommunications company founded in 1983 in Kuwait as MTC (Mobile Telecommunications Company), and later rebranded as Zain in 2007. Zain has a commercial p ...

History

Touch was established in June 2004 by Zain, and contracted by the government to manage one of the country's two existing mobile telecommunications networks. The operation was originally known as 'mtc touch', and was rebranded in June 2012 as Touch. In November 2012, Touch launched 3G/HSPA+ service in the country, adding 4G LTE mobile broadband services in some areas from May 2013. In 2019, Touch operated some two million mobile lines in Lebanon, and had a 53% share of the market. The

duopoly A duopoly (from Greek , ; and , ) is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market, and most (if not all) of the competition within that market occurs directly between them. Duopoly is the most commonly ...

market situation of Touch and Alfa has been criticised for high cost of services, with the average Lebanese household spending 5% of their income on mobile services, compared with 1.4% in Egypt, for example. In May 2020, the Lebanese government took back control of both mobile operators in the country, in preparation for re-tendering the contracts, with the Ministry of Telecommunications operating the service directly in the interim.

References

External links

* 2004 establishments in Lebanon Telecommunications companies established in 2004 Telecommunications companies of Lebanon {{Lebanon-stub