CAIRO: Egypt's ministry of communications and information technology said last week that the volume of spending on the Egyptian communications sector had reached 40 billion Egyptian pounds ($7.2 billion) annually. Minister Tarek Kamel added that this figure includes 10 billion pounds via Telecom Egypt and the remaining 30 billion is distributed through mobile phone companies at different rates. Kamel pointed out that the rate of growth in the sector is on parallel with global rates, denying rumors that Egyptians spend more per capita on mobile phone rates. The ministry said Egypt is in the “middle of the road in terms of customer costs.” Kamel said that Telecom Egypt has launched a new competitive recreational offer for mobile phones and has canceled management fees as well as increasing the number of free minutes allotted to customers in an attempt to attract new customers. Telecom Egypt, the minister continued, “provides the technological infrastructure necessary for the respect of telecommunications services mobile and fixed Internet,” rejecting criticism of some over land lines. He added that the sector “contributes to state income through the revenues of Telecom Egypt, which the state owns 30 percent of and the participation of the telecommunications apparatus in the profits of mobile operators obtaining 3 percent of its profits annually, in accordance with the terms of the license.” For unidentified mobile phone lines, which has become as much a legal as a personal rights issue, Kamel said that mobile phone companies to cooperate with the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency's interests to automate recording new mobile phone users data and “they do not run any line without verifying the identity of the user,” pointing out that there were new ways to prevent manipulation of data of clients' cards, by “identifying the name of the grandfather of the mother of the new line owner.” The Minister revealed that the number of subscribers in the mobile industry has risen to 60 million subscribers, or 75 percent of the entire population. BM
