An Egyptian business newspaper has reported the continued growth of Egypt's Internet sector with some 170,000 new subscribers during March of this year. Al-Mal reported that Egypt now currently has just over 24 million users, a growth of 0.7 percent from the previous month and 38.5 percent from the same period the year before. Despite the optimism of Internet use in the country, mobile Internet subscribers fell to 8.19 million through the end of March, a 2.3 percent decrease from the previous month, a recent report published by the ministry of telecommunications and information technology in cooperation with Telecom Egypt. On the positive side, there are now 1.78 million USB modem Internet users in the country, a 6.68 percent increase from the previous month. ADSL continued to see small rises, with a 3.2 percent monthly increase to 1.49 million subscriptions. Fixed lines continued their decline, the report said, with only 9.7 million remaining in the country, down 0.02 percent from the previous month. According to the ministry report, some 7 percent of those lines are businesses and two percent are governmental. Egypt has been hoping that mobile Internet and USB modems would rise dramatically following the 18 days of protests that ousted the former government of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, but the continued high costs in relation to incomes in the country continue to limit the overall population's ability to get online. BM
