Telecom Egypt

Egypt has made ditching antiquated copper phone wiring a national priority and Telecom Egypt is continuing its efforts to dump copper in favor of fiber optics to improve quality and reliability of service.

In April, customers in West Cairo, New Cairo, Giza city, and the Northern Coast may experience temporary outages as the new fiber network is connected. The company is also installing fiber service in the east, central and western Delta region, northern, central, and southern Upper Egypt, Ismailia and Suez.

When this phase is complete by the end of this year, over four million Egyptians will have access to fiber service. The company is accelerating its transition to fiber service as Egyptians are increasingly dumping landline service in favor of wireless. Competition from three mobile companies – Vodafone Egypt, Etisalat and Mobinil have taken a considerable market share. Last year, the Egyptian government allowed Telecom Egypt to compete with a wireless service of its own, but the three mobile providers also get to start selling landline and broadband service.

Telecom Egypt hopes its $400 million investment in fiber will slow down customer defections and allow the company to sell improved services to customers.