Egypt Cabinet to Set Integrated License Prices Within 2 Years

Egypt’s National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) revealed that identifying the various prices of mobile phone services of the integrated operator license is due to cabinet’s economic committee to issue a unified license allowing a company to operate fixed-line and mobile networks, and had sent the details of its decision to the cabinet for final approval.

The move would allow landline monopoly Telecom Egypt to offer mobile services.

The details of the unified license have been sent to the cabinet’s economic committee in preparation for it being presented for ratification and final approval.

Dr. Amr Badawi, the board of directors of NTRA said till now it did not schedule any timetable for the final approval of the license, noting that the cabinet will respond as soon as possible, in addition the voice services and international gateway will be applied after two years from offering the license and according to timetable that announced by NTRA early 2014.

Eng. Hesham Alayli CEO of (NTRA) said the board of directors resolved all the outstanding points between the major operators to activate the unified license, except the points related to the International interdependence between Etisalat Egypt and Telecom Egypt (TE)(ETAL-CA), but according to the previous period, NTRA has made many efforts to solve these points and the board of directors decided to refer the points to TE and Etisalat Egypt.

NTRA referred the details of integrated license system to the economic committee of the Egyptian Cabinet as a prelude to discuss on Cabinet and to obtain the final approval.

On December29 Amwal Al Ghad published NTRA’s planning to offer the integrated license as it will grant TE the right to provide mobile phone services and it will give the three mobile phone operators the right to provide fixed phone services to be reviewed on the Cabinet.