(Ecofin Agency) – The Egyptian telecoms regulator constantly puts pressure on operators to guarantee quality services to consumers. In December 2023, Telecom Egypt was fined 20 million Egyptian pounds for a widespread outage of its telecoms infrastructure.
Egypt’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) announced on Wednesday, May 1, that it had imposed fines totaling 33 million Egyptian pounds (approximately $688,300) on mobile operators in during the first quarter of 2024. The regulator explains that it punished Vodafone, Orange, Etisalat and Telecom Egypt (WE) for violating mobile service quality parameters during the first three months of the year.
In the first quarter of 2024, Vodafone, Orange, Etisalat and Telecom Egypt presented 23, 27, 17 and 35 poor quality areas respectively out of a total of 114 with regard to voice services. For data services, Vodafone, Orange, Etisalat respectively showed 2, 2 and 3 areas of poor quality. Telecom Egypt did flawlessly.
The constant pressure that the NTRA puts on operators is part of its mission to “ensure the provision of telecommunications services to all regions of the country, including economic and development regions as well as urban, rural and remote areas“. Since the 2nd half of 2021, the regulator has doubled the amount of fines for poor telecoms quality.
In December 2023, Telecom Egypt was fined EGP 20 million for a widespread outage on its telecoms infrastructure that resulted in the unavailability of voice and internet services on December 5. These regular sanctions imposed on Egyptian telecom operators should push them to increase investments to improve the coverage of their respective networks as well as the quality of services provided to consumers.
Isaac K. Kassouwi
Also read:
11/12/2023 — Egypt: regulator imposes a fine of around $650,000 on Telecom Egypt
03/11/2022 – Egypt: the regulator imposes a fine of around $1 million on telecom operators for poor quality of service
05/03/2021 – Egypt: the regulator will double the amount of fines for poor telecoms quality from the second half of the year
