CAIRO: Telecoms regulators, embroiled in a licensing dispute with Mobinil over the use of EDGE technology, have given the mobile phone operator two weeks to stop using the technology, government officials said on Sunday. A senior official at Egypt s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) said Egypt considered EDGE, whose enhanced speed allows users to view streaming video, to be a third-generation technology for which Mobinil has no license. We have advised them officially that within two weeks they should stop EDGE, the official told Reuters. We talked with them. We did not come to an understanding on a verbal basis. So we decided, let s do it in writing and see what happens. A spokeswoman for Mobinil, which is majority-owned by regional operator Orascom Telecom, had no immediate comment. Mobinil has said that its current second-generation license was sufficient to run EDGE and stated earlier this month that it had an understanding with the government that it could continue to use the technology so long as discussions were under way. Mobinil had deferred applying for a higher-bandwidth 3G license for a year, citing what it said were unattractive terms. Egypt s two mobile operators, Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt, would have to pay approximately $580 million for 3G licenses because the price is linked to an unexpectedly high winning bid for the country s third mobile phone license. The third mobile license was sold at an auction last month to Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates for LE 16.7 billion ($2.9 billion). The resulting price that existing operators would have to pay for 3G prompted Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes to lower its long-term fair-value share price estimates to LE 202.30 for Mobinil and LE 110.40 for Vodafone. The NTRA official said that Mobinil could only get a 3G license after Etisalat enters the market. Mobinil started EDGE trials in Egypt early in 2006 and its services are now offered in major cities and airports. EDGE allows the transmission of non-voice data at speeds three to five times faster than GPRS technology. Reuters
