In Lebanon the number of mobile phone customers grew by 18.3% from 0.86 million in 2004 to reach 0.99 million in 2005 and 1.01 million in mid-2006 with a mobile penetration rate (of 28% in 2005).

The two mobile providers are MTC Touch (owned by Kuwait-based MTC) and Alfa (51% owned by a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, with the remaining stake owned by Saudi companies FAL Holding and Detasad). At the end of 2006, MTC had 560,000 customers, representing a 51% market share, while Alfa had a 49% share.
In general, Lebanon has the most expensive telecoms costs, 62.5% higher than the regional average of 8 cents per minute. Similarly, SMS costs in Lebanon are the most expensive, with Alfa and MTC Touch charging 20 cents and 15 cents to post-paid clients, respectively, compared to the regional average of 6.3 cents. For pre-paid customers, MTC Touch charges 9 cents per SMS.

SMS Volumes
Analysis of the use of SMS over a period of months. Pre-paid customers are particularly heavy users of SMS, mainly due to their lower cost: they send four times as many text messages as post-paid users.

MTC Touch customers alone sent a total of 9.80 million messages in January 2005, a figure that had risen to 12.3 million a year later – an increase of 25.5%. By the following year there had been a 49% increase. As a whole 2006 saw an increase of 27% on the previous 12-month period. The number of text messages sent rose by almost 7% between June and July, the month when war broke out. It then fell 20% in August and fell again marginally in September before rising back to an all-time record in December.