When Staying Online Costs Half a Paycheck: Syrians Confront Their Telecom Giants
Reporter Ahmad Qwaider takes readers inside a very different kind of Syrian uprising: a pocketbook revolt over mobile data. Days after President Ahmed al-Sharaa flew home from Washington vowing accountability and reform, Syriatel and MTN quietly axed the cheap hourly bundles millions relied on and jacked up prices by as much as 200%. Service did not improve. For a country where many earn just $80 to $120 a month, the shock landed like a new tax on survival.
The anger is about more than phone bills. Syrians remember Syriatel as the cash cow of Rami Makhlouf, cousin to Bashar Assad, and a pillar of the old regime’s crony capitalism. Today, both Syriatel and MTN sit under opaque, palace-linked control, with judicial “custodians” and hidden shareholders. People assume the hikes feed someone they will never be able to vote out or sue.
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Qwaider traces how the outrage races across social media, into classrooms, internet cafés, and even emergency operations rooms near the Golan Heights, where White Helmets staff warn that unaffordable data could cost lives. He sets Syria’s prices against those in Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, exposing one of the region’s worst deals: some of the weakest speeds for some of the highest relative costs.
All this plays out as the government sells a glittering “SilkLink” fiber-optic project to foreign investors, even while investors stay away and families decide whether to stay online at all. By the end of this reported piece, Qwaider leaves readers with a stark question: In a country where half of income already goes to food, what happens when connection itself becomes a luxury? This is a story worth reading to the last line.
