New lease for ADSL BROADBAND ADSL (asymmetric digital service lines) fees were slashed by 40 per cent late last week. The decision was approved by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority. The step was undertaken as part of a plan to restructure the broadband initiative which was first launched in 2004. The ultimate target is to reach half a million broadband subscribers by the end of 2007. Under the new scheme, ADSL lines will be offered for a price as low as LE95, down from LE150 a month, for a 256 kilobyte per second. The price of one megabyte per second will go down from LE450 to LE380. The restructuring of prices is being undertaken in order to encourage a wider use of broadband services throughout the country. Up until now, some 90 per cent of broadband services have been limited to Cairo and Alexandria. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is also hoping, with the new prices, to overcome the loophole whereby one ADSL was shared by several individuals. According to the new system value-added voice and video services will be separately charged. This means that if one line is used by several individuals, it will be difficult to specify who used the service. ADSL prices have been considered too high, compared to families' average incomes. Companies also complain that the current cost of the service leaves no margin for price reductions. Despite this, the ADSL service has succeeded in attracting some 130,000 subscribers in the past two years, up from around 5,000 subscribers. The broadband initiative is one of several attempts by the government to boost Egypt's Internet penetration rate to 7.5 million by the end of 2007. The figure stood at five million in December 2005, according to MCIT data. Financial reform supported EGYPT's financial sector reform programme will receive some $1 billion in soft loans from the World Bank and the African Development Bank (ADB). An agreement was initialised this week by the Central Bank of Egypt and the World Bank. According to this agreement Egypt will receive a $500 million soft loan. This will be repaid over 18 years with a grace period of six years. Another agreement for an equal amount from ADB will be signed in September. The funds will be directed to the development of banking and non-banking institutions. These comprise insurance, mortgage finance and leasing companies, as well as the stock market and capital market. Can't celebrate yet MAHMOUD Mohieddin, minister of investment this week said that despite the improvements in Egypt's overall economic indicators, it is still not time to celebrate. Speaking in a conference organised by his ministry and Morgan Stanley entitled "Egypt and the international capital markets: growing opportunities", Mohieddin said that Egypt's growth rate of 5.5 is not sufficient to attain the desired leap forward. He said that Egypt has yet to work on improving the standards of living and in alleviating poverty. He said that job creation is one of the government's biggest challenges. Mohieddin said that the official unemployment rate has dropped from 9.9 per cent to 9.5 per cent. He also presented conference participants the other results of reforms executed in the past two years. This includes increasing the level of foreign currency reserves to $22.9 billion. "That is not a target of economic policy, but a byproduct of such policies," Mohieddin added. He said that banking sector reform has resulted in the number of banks falling to 43, down from 62 in 2003. The minister also added that insurance sector reform is on track, and that a programme for this sector will be ready, by February 2007. Google Arabic news THE INTERNET search engine Google last week launched Google news in Arabic, enabling users to view the latest news headlines and related photos. These will be grouped in different categories such as world and business news, in addition to searching and browsing through 500 Arabic news sources in the Middle East. While Google does not itself publish any material, it makes whatever there is on the web easily accessible. In the case of Google Arabic news, this will be by collating the news articles from multiple sources in one place, Speaking at a press conference in Cairo, Dennis Woodside, director of emerging markets for Google, said that, "people in the Middle East and other Arabic speakers, globally will now be able to search and browse news in their native tongues. The launch of Google News in Arabic demonstrates Google's commitment to bring localised products to users across the globe." Sherif Iskandar, Google's local partner in Egypt believes that the new service will help boost Arabic content on the Internet. This currently accounts for only one per cent of total content, despite the fact that Arabic is the fifth spoken language worldwide. There are currently 23 million Internet users in the Middle East who are expected to reach 53 million by 2008. The average Internet user in major Middle Eastern markets spends around 10 hours per week online. Woodside said that Google selected Egypt as a site in which to launch this service, because it "has many opportunities for success". Investments of ICT companies in Egypt have exceeded LE30 billion in the past seven years. This is a 700 per cent increase that brings the number of ICT companies to 1571. The Arabic language version of Google News is available at http://news.google.com/intl/ar. There are currently 36 regional editions of Google News available in 14 different languages. Doubling and redoubling FUJITSU Siemens Computers, Europe's leading IT provider is determined to achieve a 100 per cent growth in Egypt this year. It predicts that sales will rise to $12 million which is 10 per cent of total country market share. "With Egypt's IT sector, predicting year-on-year growth of 35 per cent, is an exciting and critical market for us," Hussein Shehab, the newly appointed sales manager for Egypt, pointed out. The move comes as Fujitsu Siemens increased its desktop and notebook sales in Egypt by 434 per cent. The average market growth of 13.5 per cent makes the company the fastest growing vendor to both public and private sectors. The goal, so far, according to Shehab, is to place Fujitsu Siemens on the short list of the top three players in Egypt. Shehab describes the country's market as one of "massive potential". He predicts that its sales revenues will reach $80 million by the turn of the decade.
