Lebanon: High Fraud Country?

[superduper703]

So, I'm ordering a new calling card on my company's (huge multinational) website, and I get this:

You can make calls from any location worldwide to any other country except the following high fraud countries:
Ecuador, El Salvador, Iran, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, and Pakistan.

First, I feel bad because all my colleagues know that I am Lebanese. I played it cool obviously with my colleagues, but I was burning inside. Any of you had similar experiences?

But mostly, I wanted to understand where this fraud is coming from. Individuals outside Lebanon or the Telecommunications Ministry inside Lebanon?

[Lallous]

It is because calling cards get stolen easily and most of the time, to fraud them. If not stolen, just used by the owner without paying. Also, most likely, the defrauders happen to be Lebanese or originate from these high risk countries and/or call to these countries. It has nothing to do with the Ministry.

Lebanese fraud citizenship, you think they can't fraud calling cards

[nuclearcat]

It is linked as i know to something else.
VoIP carriers usually terminate over "private" termination companies. VoIP "termination" is illegal in Lebanon, and such "termination companies" get closed very fast. Also they are getting payment from VoIP carriers "in advance". They cannot use Ogero service, because Ogero doesn't offer anything reliable, and also it is just hard to deal with them. So many VoIP carriers just unable to terminate calls in Lebanon at all.

As i know also Ministry of Telecom is not paying their international bills well, so, maybe it is related to that too.

[Raficoo]

Originally Posted by nuclearcat

They cannot use Ogero service, because Ogero doesn't offer anything reliable, and also it is just hard to deal with them. So many VoIP carriers just unable to terminate calls in Lebanon at all.

As i know also Ministry of Telecom is not paying their international bills well, so, maybe it is related to that too.

True.. True

similar story like why Paypal Doesn't accept Cards from Lebanon i guess...

[nuclearcat]

Paypal story is different. They don't release reason, why it is not supporting Lebanon.
For example Ukraine have higher fraud level than Lebanon, but have "send only" Paypal.

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by nuclearcat

It is linked as i know to something else.
VoIP carriers usually terminate over "private" termination companies. VoIP "termination" is illegal in Lebanon, and such "termination companies" get closed very fast. Also they are getting payment from VoIP carriers "in advance". They cannot use Ogero service, because Ogero doesn't offer anything reliable, and also it is just hard to deal with them. So many VoIP carriers just unable to terminate calls in Lebanon at all.

As i know also Ministry of Telecom is not paying their international bills well, so, maybe it is related to that too.

Do you know what a calling card is ? This is not related to VoIP, you're just being off-topic right there.

Calling card is a card with a pin number your local phone line supplier gives you so you could collect call from anywhere in the world and the amount will be charged on your regular monthly bill.

What does this have to do with Ogero ?

As for Paypal in Lebanon, there is no official reason. It could be fraud, regulations, lack of agreement with banks, etc. No official reason has been given but it's probably a mix of all the above.

[nuclearcat]

Lallous, are you sure?
Usually calling card nothing more than prepaid payment card for some call operator. Similar to recharge card in cellular operator.
I didn't understood exactly what is a problem, with card purchasing or with calling to Lebanon?

If it is third party operator (not Ogero), you can establish call over callback (only one choice for Lebanon), on other countries such carriers have short numbers as "gateway", and sometimes, like in Cyprus, by different prefix you can just dial over another international call operator.
To get calls in your regular monthly bill (Ogero?) this carrier need to have agreement with them. Ogero have monopoly here for this.

Try to call over Skype to Lebanon, to cellular number. 1-2 month before people was not able to call me. 1 year before it worked, but with terrible quality, almost impossible to talk. Nothing to do with calling cards, in this case. But as proof, what i said above.

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by nuclearcat

Lallous, are you sure?
Usually calling card nothing more than prepaid payment card for some call operator. Similar to recharge card in cellular operator.
I didn't understood exactly what is a problem, with card purchasing or with calling to Lebanon?

If it is third party operator (not Ogero), you can establish call over callback (only one choice for Lebanon), on other countries such carriers have short numbers as "gateway", and sometimes, like in Cyprus, by different prefix you can just dial over another international call operator.
To get calls in your regular monthly bill (Ogero?) this carrier need to have agreement with them. Ogero have monopoly here for this.

Try to call over Skype to Lebanon, to cellular number. 1-2 month before people was not able to call me. 1 year before it worked, but with terrible quality, almost impossible to talk. Nothing to do with calling cards, in this case. But as proof, what i said above.

Yeah I am sure. What he refers too is different from what you are stating. It is something related to your local phone line supplier and not a third party company.

and yeah I know what you designate by calling cards too (not the subject of the thread here). That's what I use to call Lebanon from Canada. Fixed amounts credit, like 1, 2 or 5$. Basically what these companies do as you said, they rely on a gateway (your call gets through a local gateway (you call a local phone number and you enter the number you want to reach) who sends it over the net to the other gateway in the foreign country) , so the rate per minute would be the same as if you were calling from inside Lebanon to another phone line inside Lebanon with a small margin of course.

Example : One minute costs 0,12 $ (of an already bought credit) with these calling cards, which is almost the same price paid by a user inside Lebanon if he wants to call another user inside Lebanon. (landline-to-landline).

If I would call through my local phone line supplier directly to Lebanon, the rates are around 0,50$ per minute charged next month on my bill.

[nuclearcat]

What topic starer will say about that?
Which type of calling card he mean?

[Vampire]

A similar situation happened to me few months ago when I was buying Yahoo! Voice credits (using my visa card). While I was filling the online form, I noticed that Lebanon is not found in the countries list . Actually, I can chose USA or any other country in the list, and the deal will be completed successfully, but I wanted to complain ! So, I emailed Yahoo, and told them politely that there is a country named Lebanon .... They promised me that they will add Lebanon to the list as soon as possible .... Few hours later my Yahoo! Voice account was blocked!!!!