Infrastructure, proliferation of services keys to doubling TE's revenues in a year: Experts

Losses started with Mobinil entering the market, and licences should not be issued without the development of the operators' infrastructure, says Abu Quraish

Telecom Egypt's infrastructure and the proliferation of its services across the country are the most prominent factors for doubling its revenues during 2015, according to various experts.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Khaled Negm demanded from the board of directors of TE, headed by Mohamed Salem, doubling the company's revenues in the upcoming period.
Mohamed Abu Quraish, president of the TE Workers' Independent Syndicate and head of the Scientific Society of Telecom Engineers (SSTE) said that the crisis started when the first licence for a mobile company was given to the private sector. This sector was represented in Mobinil and passed through the steps of privatising the sector. He explained that if the policies applied in the telecommunications sector actually aimed to increase revenues from TE, they would have allowed TE to enter the internet and mobile market since 1996.
He pointed out that such a system would have allowed fair competition between the companies of the sector. He added that it was a way to develop the communications services' market with new services that were not known to the market, such as integration of fixed networks with mobile.
He stressed that if the telecommunications sector had followed this plan, the number of fixed line subscribers would not have declined from 11.5 million to 6 million subscribers in the past two years. Also, the stock value would not have dropped to 20 piasters.
Abu Quraish said that the solution to increase the profitability of TE is to change the policies adopted in it. TE also must have a mobile network with the appropriate frequencies, rather than renting out infrastructure to other operators that do not have the frequencies.
He added that corruption in TE should be fought, and those who contributed to it during the previous period should be held accountable, and the unfair and anti-workers' rights regulations should be changed. TE should also stand against the appointment of people based on favouritism, achieve social justice, eliminate the big gaps between different functional groups in the company, and apply the minimum and maximum wage.
Meanwhile, Abdel Rahman El-Sawy, head of Industry Representatives Committee of National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA), said that TE should fix central malfunctions and deal with the public in a better manner.
Sawy demanded that TE should meet with other mobile and internet services operating companies who depend on TE for infrastructure, saying that they should act as integrated entities.
On the other hand, communications expert Talaat Omar said that changing the administration is more important than changing resources, affirming that TE has enough resources and capabilities to enable it to double profitability in a year at the most. The most important of these resources and capabilities are the infrastructure and the services spread.
Omar also noted that in 1990, TE was able to generate more than EGP 1bn in revenues and had a portfolio of more than $300m. This was in addition to financing its projects as well as other national projects, such as the underground metro, which led citizens to buy even more share from it than in the current Suez Canal project.