Competitive Benchmarking for Telecommunications Operators in Lebanon

An organization operating in the telecommunications industry in Lebanon sought to reassess its competitive position amid declining consumer spending, rising operating costs, and rapid shifts in service expectations. The client aimed to understand how its performance, pricing, and service delivery compared to peers in the Lebanese market, particularly as competition intensified and customers became increasingly price-sensitive.

The Lebanese telecommunications market had become highly competitive despite overall demand stagnation. Price compression, infrastructure constraints, and inconsistent service quality were eroding customer loyalty. The client lacked a structured benchmarking framework to evaluate its relative performance across pricing, network reliability, customer experience, and cost efficiency. Existing comparisons were anecdotal and internally biased, limiting management’s ability to identify realistic improvement levers. Without objective benchmarks, strategic decisions risked being misaligned with market realities, leading to inefficient capital allocation and declining market relevance.

A comprehensive competitive benchmarking exercise was designed to provide an objective, data-driven comparison against key market peers operating under similar regulatory and economic constraints. The solution focused on identifying performance gaps that were both material and addressable within Lebanon’s operational context, avoiding unrealistic international benchmarks. The output translated competitive insights into prioritized improvement actions rather than descriptive comparisons.

The engagement followed a structured benchmarking methodology:

• Definition of relevant peer set within the Lebanese market
• Comparison across pricing structures, service bundles, and affordability thresholds
• Assessment of network performance and service reliability indicators
• Customer experience benchmarking using satisfaction and complaint metrics
• Cost structure and operational efficiency comparison

Findings were normalized to account for scale differences and regulatory constraints.

Key recommendations included:

• Rebalancing pricing plans to improve affordability perception
• Prioritizing network investments in high-usage zones
• Simplifying service offerings to reduce operational complexity
• Strengthening customer service response times
• Introducing performance dashboards aligned with benchmark gaps

The recommendations emphasized competitive parity and targeted differentiation, not costly overinvestment.

Implementation of the benchmarking insights supported pricing and service adjustments that stabilized customer churn, reducing attrition by an estimated 3–5 percentage points. Operational efficiency initiatives delivered cost savings of approximately 7–9% over 12 months. Improved customer satisfaction metrics contributed to higher retention, protecting recurring revenue equivalent to USD 2–3 million annually in a constrained market environment.