CAIRO: MobiNil's managing director Alex Shalabi has denied allegations that MobiNil is in talks with Telecom Egypt to provide international call services to its clients in return for dropping its licensing bid. Shalabi said his company has arranged meetings with the National Telecom Regulatory Authority to negotiate licenses for both 3G and international calls services. "It will be more economically feasible for MobiNil to obtain both licenses than only a license for 3G services, he said. Last week, Telecom Egypt reached a partnership agreement with Vodafone Egypt under which the state-owned company would provide international calls services to Vodafone's clients in return for the second mobile phone service provider to drop its plans for obtaining a license. A license to provide 3G services is expected to end months of disagreements between MobiNil and regulators over using the EDGE technology that NTRA insists to classify as 3G technology while MobiNil argues it is only a development of GSM networks. Meanwhile, Mohammad Emran, chairman of UAE Etisalat, the third mobile phone operator in Egypt, said his company would apply for international calls license, noting that investments of Etisalat Egypt could not be restricted to mobile phone operations. Licenses for international calls services have been postponed several times this year, raising doubts among telecom operators over the true intentions of regulators to launch them any time soon. They claim that National Telecom Regulations Authority (NTRA) is trying to provide Telecom Egypt, which monopolizes the service in Egypt, enough time to rehabilitate its conditions for the new market setup.
