Submission to the TRA’s public consultation on licensing and deploying fibre-to-the-home access networks
The National Human Rights Commission of Lebanon, including the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (NHRC-CPT), has submitted its official response to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s public consultation on the “FTTH Access Network Licensing and Deployment Policy”.
The Commission called for a fundamental revision of the proposed policy so that its objectives are not limited to attracting investment, modernizing infrastructure and promoting competition, but also encompass digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, national resilience, data protection, universal access, the preservation of public assets and the State’s strategic control over critical digital infrastructure.
The Commission participated in the consultation pursuant to its mandate under Law No. 62/2016, including its authority to provide opinions on legislation, decisions and public policies affecting human rights and to assess their compatibility with Lebanon’s constitutional and international obligations.
The Commission welcomed the launch of the public consultation and the effort to modernize Lebanon’s fixed telecommunications infrastructure. It stressed that reliable, affordable and high-quality internet connectivity has become essential to the effective exercise of a wide range of rights, including freedom of expression, access to information, education, health, work, participation in public affairs and access to public services and the digital economy.
However, the Commission found that the consultation document approaches FTTH primarily through a traditional investment and competition framework and does not sufficiently reflect the transformation of telecommunications infrastructure into a matter of national sovereignty, public security, democratic governance and human rights.
An FTTH network cannot be treated merely as a commercial project or investment opportunity. It will constitute critical national digital infrastructure upon which public administrations, hospitals, schools, universities, financial institutions, emergency services, security bodies, businesses and individuals will increasingly depend.
“Investment and competition are legitimate objectives, but they are no longer sufficient for telecommunications policymaking in 2026,” the Commission said. “The decisions taken today on the ownership and governance of Lebanon’s fibre network will determine who controls the country’s digital infrastructure, how personal data are protected and whether essential services can continue during crises.”
The absence of digital sovereignty is a fundamental policy gap
The Commission considered the absence of a comprehensive treatment of digital sovereignty from the consultation document to be a fundamental policy deficiency.
Digital sovereignty does not mean isolating Lebanon from international networks or excluding private and foreign investment. Rather, it means preserving the State’s effective legal, institutional and technical capacity to govern strategic digital infrastructure, protect the rights of people within its jurisdiction, maintain essential services and prevent excessive dependency on actors that are not subject to public accountability.
The Commission recommended that digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, resilience and strategic autonomy be explicitly incorporated into the policy’s objectives and used as binding criteria when assessing licensing applications, deployment plans and potential operators.
It also called for the identification of assets that must be considered strategic, including ducts, poles, telecommunications chambers, fibre routes, central offices, interconnection points, network-management systems, subscriber databases, operational data and authentication systems.
Licences must not allow private entities to acquire effective strategic control over assets developed through public rights of way or infrastructure belonging to the Ministry of Telecommunications and Ogero. Nor should they restrict the State’s ability to intervene during emergencies, require the continuity of essential services or recover public assets when a licence expires or is revoked.
Cybersecurity and resilience must be built into the network
The Commission warned that requiring prospective operators to submit a general risk assessment would not be sufficient given the critical nature of the proposed infrastructure.
Cybersecurity must be embedded in the policy’s objectives, licensing criteria and enforceable obligations from the outset. It should not be deferred to subsequent technical guidelines or left to the discretion of individual operators.
Every deployment plan should include a comprehensive cybersecurity and resilience architecture covering network segmentation, supply-chain security, vulnerability management, incident detection and response, secure access controls, software and equipment updates, backup systems, physical protection and business continuity.
Lebanon’s experience of armed conflict, prolonged electricity shortages, disasters and institutional crises demonstrates the need for a network capable of remaining operational during exceptional circumstances, cyberattacks and the failure of an individual operator or foreign supplier.
The Commission therefore recommended route diversity, alternative power sources, redundancy for essential network functions, emergency maintenance arrangements, secure backup capacity and prioritized restoration of services to hospitals, emergency bodies and other critical facilities.
At the same time, security considerations must not be used as an open-ended justification for arbitrary surveillance or disproportionate restrictions on communications. Security measures should have a clear legal basis, be evidence-based and remain subject to independent oversight and human rights safeguards.
Preventing a deeper digital divide
The Commission stressed that the deployment of fibre infrastructure must reduce Lebanon’s digital divide rather than reproduce it by concentrating investment in Beirut, densely populated areas and wealthier neighbourhoods.
Leaving deployment entirely to commercial incentives risks excluding rural and remote communities, low-income households, persons with disabilities, older persons and public institutions located outside major economic centres.
The Commission called for measurable geographic and social coverage obligations, including requirements linking deployment in profitable areas to simultaneous or prior deployment in rural and underserved communities.
Operators should also be required to provide affordable basic packages, accessible services for persons with disabilities, transparent installation fees and protections against discriminatory practices.
Schools, hospitals, universities, public administrations and community facilities in underserved areas should be prioritized through a clearly defined national universal-access programme.
Privacy, data protection and net neutrality
The Commission emphasized that FTTH operators will process substantial quantities of personal information, including subscriber identities, billing details, device identifiers, traffic and communications data and records capable of revealing patterns of personal and professional behaviour.
Licences should therefore contain clear requirements on data minimization, purpose limitation, security, retention and deletion. They should also regulate subcontractors and cross-border data processing.
Any interception of communications or disclosure of subscriber information must have a clear legal basis and comply with the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality. It must be subject to independent authorization and effective remedies.
The Commission also called for the protection of net neutrality. Operators must not block, throttle or prioritize lawful content and services on discriminatory or purely commercial grounds. Any traffic-management measure must be necessary, proportionate, time-bound and transparently communicated to users.
Protecting public assets and the future of Liban Telecom
The Commission expressed concern that the consultation document does not sufficiently explain how the two proposed licensing options would interact with Law No. 431/2002 and Decree No. 13944/2005 on the establishment of Liban Telecom, or how the economic value of State assets would be preserved.
The consultation document estimates that approximately 800,000 subscribers are served by unregulated networks, compared with around 426,000 subscribers in the regulated market. Subscriber relationships and the associated data have become some of the telecommunications sector’s most valuable intangible assets.
The Commission warned that transferring these subscribers between private operators without a clear national strategy could consolidate a situation that developed outside the law, transfer significant value away from the State and weaken the future economic viability of Liban Telecom.
It called for a comprehensive and public inventory of infrastructure, rights of way, fibre routes, subscriber-related value and other tangible and intangible assets, followed by an independent and transparent valuation before any long-term licences are granted.
A third option based on public stewardship
The Commission concluded that neither of the two options presented in the consultation should be adopted in its current form.
Option 1, which would rely on existing Data Service Provider licences, could accelerate deployment but may entrench the advantages of existing operators without a new, competitive and transparent assessment of their technical capacity, beneficial ownership, compliance record and cybersecurity preparedness.
Option 2, involving the competitive assignment of national or regional FTTH access licences, could provide a more appropriate basis if fundamentally redesigned. However, a conventional auction focused on financial bids could favour the highest bidder rather than the operator offering the strongest commitments on coverage, security, affordability, public interest and human rights.
The Commission proposed a third, hybrid model based on public stewardship of strategic infrastructure and a separation between strategic ownership and competitive operation.
Under this model, the State, through the Ministry of Telecommunications or a properly constituted and transparently governed Liban Telecom, would retain ownership and strategic control of critical national and passive infrastructure. Qualified operators could receive competitively awarded, time-bound rights to deploy, operate or maintain defined network components.
All operators would be subject to binding requirements on open access, non-discrimination, universal coverage, cybersecurity, data protection and the preservation of public assets.
Direct answers to the consultation questions
The Commission’s submission includes direct responses to all nine questions raised by the TRA.
On licence duration, the Commission considered a basic term of between 15 and 20 years potentially appropriate to support investment recovery and access to financing. However, licences should be subject to comprehensive reviews every three to five years, and renewal should never be automatic. Continued rights should depend on compliance with coverage, quality, affordability, open-access and cybersecurity obligations.
Regarding national or regional licences, the Commission recommended a combination of both. Regional areas should be defined according to objective and published criteria, including population, household density, existing coverage, income and deprivation indicators, deployment costs, geography, available passive infrastructure, the location of critical public facilities and exposure to disasters and conflict.
Regions must not be designed in a manner that allows operators to select profitable neighbourhoods while abandoning less attractive communities. High- and low-viability areas should be grouped into balanced licensing packages.
The Commission also stated that open-access obligations should apply from the moment each network segment becomes commercially operational. They should cover access to ducts, poles, telecommunications chambers, dark fibre, capacity, interconnection, wholesale services and the technical information necessary for effective access.
Open-access terms should be transparent, fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, with published reference offers, standardized request procedures, service-level agreements, cost-oriented pricing and rapid dispute-resolution mechanisms.
The principle of open access should not differ between urban and rural areas. Higher rural deployment costs may be addressed through transparent public subsidies, risk-sharing arrangements or regulated wholesale prices, rather than by closing networks to competitors.
The Commission recognized that limited, time-bound investment protection may be justified in demonstrably high-cost or underserved areas. However, such protection must remain exceptional, should generally not exceed three to five years and must be based on an independent financing-gap analysis and a competitive process.
Any protection should be conditional upon verifiable coverage, affordable prices, service quality, open access, net neutrality, cybersecurity and the publication of performance data. It should automatically terminate if the operator fails to meet its obligations.
To ensure equitable deployment between urban and rural areas, the Commission recommended paired-area commitments linking every deployment obligation in a profitable area to a simultaneous or prior commitment in a rural or underserved area.
This should be supplemented by separate annual coverage targets for urban and rural households. Coverage must be measured according to homes that can actually be connected within a short period and at a disclosed cost, rather than merely by the presence of fibre near a community.
On the selection mechanism, the Commission rejected a purely financial auction and recommended a transparent comparative evaluation or multi-criteria “beauty contest”, with the financial offer treated as a secondary rather than decisive factor.
The most significant evaluation weights should be assigned to rural coverage, affordability, deployment schedules, cybersecurity and resilience architecture, technical expertise, demonstrated financing, open access, non-discrimination, data protection, human rights compliance, interoperability, environmental impact, workers’ rights and the efficient use of public assets.
Call for a broader consultation process
The Commission urged the TRA not to finalize the FTTH policy in isolation from the proposed Right-of-Way Framework and Optical Fiber Deployment Guidelines, which have not yet been adopted or submitted to public consultation.
Stakeholders cannot fully assess licensing options without access to the proposed rules governing public infrastructure, pricing, deployment standards, safety, maintenance, repairs and accountability.
The Commission therefore called for the publication of these documents and the supporting market data, as well as prior assessments of the policy’s impact on human rights, cybersecurity, competition, public finances and the environment.
It also recommended extending the consultation period and convening accessible public sessions involving municipalities, consumer associations, civil society organizations, technical experts and communities outside Beirut.
The Commission concluded that Lebanon’s future fibre network must be affordable, secure, resilient and accountable under Lebanese law. It must protect public assets and personal data, reduce inequality and preserve meaningful public control over the infrastructure on which the country’s digital future will depend.
“Lebanon’s digital future cannot be built on investment and competition alone,” the Commission said. “It must be grounded in a sovereign and democratic framework that guarantees security, resilience, equality and respect for human rights.”
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