The Communications and Information Technology Ministry has called on mobile phone operators to improve their customer service in order to end the recent flow of customer complaints regarding poor service quality. Communications Minister Mohamed Salem said he instructed the National Telecom Regulatory Authority's (NTRA) chief executive to hold intensive meetings with the heads of Egypt's three mobile phone operators to put an end to the complaints. Salem told Al-Masry Al-Youm “there are some bugs in the networks' performance as a result of a number of factors, which we will discuss with the mobile phone companies in hopes of improving the quality of service.” He pointed out however that the level of service is not as bad as some are portraying it. “We aim to achieve the best possible network efficiency rates through the companies' commitment to invest in the development of the networks and distributing them as widely as possible,” said Salem. The number of mobile users in Egypt currently exceeds 80 million subscribers, with government estimates putting usage rates at just over one phone per Egyptian. Salem denied companies' claims that the decline in frequencies allocated to telephone companies in light of the steady increase in subscriber numbers was the main reason behind the decline in service quality. He added that “this problem is on its way to a solution.” Despite the NTRA's usual quarterly reports on the companies' quality of mobile services over the past two years, it has failed to publish any reports on the performance of mobile networks in Egypt since the beginning of 2011. Translated from the Arabic Edition
