CAIRO - Egypt's telecom regulator has approved two consortia to provide cable, telephone and internet services to residential compounds in Cairo's fast-growing suburbs and elsewhere, its top official said on Thursday. "The committee has finished its work, and we had two bids, and both bids were accepted," Amr Badawi, the head of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), said, adding the regulator sent the groups notification late Wednesday. He said one group was led by LinkDotNet and included affiliates of Orascom Telecom, and the other included Vodafone, which runs one of Egypt's three mobile operators. The licences had received a lukewarm reception from many telecom firms and some analysts were disappointed by their limited scope and reliance on the infrastructure of landline monopoly Telecom Egypt. Badawi also said the NTRA had appealed against a court ruling which had blocked its decision to lower the fee Telecom Egypt must pay to mobile operators when fixed-line calls are connected to mobile phones. An administrative court ruled in mobile operator Mobinil's favour last month, after the mobile firm challenged the regulator's 2008 decision. "We've appealed that, and our decision is still on," Badawi said. "We believe that we have a just case and we will prevail at the end."
