Victor Zakharchenko. Internet in Egypt: challenges of growth

Internet in Egypt: challenges of growth
Victor Zakharchenko

Date of publication: October 16, 2001

And the Internet began in Egypt in October 1993 . It was in those days that a connection (9.6K) was established between the Egyptian University Network and France through Bitnet. The number of users at that time was about 2 thousand people.

In 1994, the State Information Center (IDSC) of the Egyptian Cabinet of Ministers, in collaboration with the Regional Software Development and Information Technology Center (RISTEC), began implementing a plan to spread the Internet in Egypt, relying on financial support from the Egyptian government.

Since the early days of the Egyptian Internet project, free access has been provided to corporations, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and other companies operating in the new technology industry (and today the Egyptian Internet is dominated by corporate users). Egypt began developing its Internet infrastructure by providing priority access to those who will be driving this industry in the future. As a result of this approach, IDSC/RITSEC has been able to raise the level of familiarity with the Internet to a level that was only common in university circles.

This marked the beginning of increased Internet use in Egypt, raising the maximum number of Internet users at the end of 1995 to 10,000.

In 1996, the government, represented by IDSC/RITSEC, and Egyptian Telecom (the public operator) took the initiative to regulate tariffs and open the gateway to private providers . In its first year of licensing commercial providers, IDST/RITSEC issued 12 permits to provide Internet services for both commercial and private use.

Next, IDSC/RITSEC representatives began licensing providers in large non-capital cities. This entailed an increase in the number of users from 25,000 at the beginning of 1997 to 100,000 by the summer of 1998. During the same period, the number of licensed providers also increased sharply, reaching 40 companies . Today, InTouch has the largest number of subscribers.

The number of users in Egypt varies, according to various studies, from 400 thousand (according to the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper) to 600 thousand - according to the latest Telecom research. However, most of them are aimed at private providers.

Often, one subscription number can be used by large groups of users: unlike developed countries, almost 100% of subscribers in Egypt are legal entities (about 15% are government agencies, 35% are science and education, 50% are private businesses). This situation is explained by a number of objective reasons:
- high duties on imported computer equipment with almost complete absence of local production. There was a breakthrough in this direction after Intel entered the local market;
- low purchasing power of the majority of the population;
- low educational level. It is to overcome this problem that business parks are created;
- insufficient development of telecommunications throughout the country, especially in regions remote from the capital.

The reasons for this imbalance include the presence of some kind of traffic control. Each private provider is under the supervision of a special government information center (IDSC), through which satellite communications are provided. This center may block access to certain pages, but, unlike some other Arab countries, Egypt practices a more liberal approach to the selection of information (there is virtually no censorship on the Internet).

Domestically, IDSC/RITSEC installed digital multiplexers in public places, creating a digital network. The Telecom-supported network provides high-speed distribution connectivity to more than 50 nodes across the country. Unfortunately, areas remote from the capital and large cities continue to suffer due to the weakness of telecommunications infrastructure. To address this problem, IDSC/RITSEC is experimenting with the use of VSAT technology to connect six data centers in rural areas of northern Egypt.

Today Egypt has three Internet gateways .

The first gateway is managed by IDSC/RITSEC. It has two partners - MCI and Global One. This gateway serves the government sector and also supports 15 of the 16 major providers in the country. This sector is focused on providing services to commercial organizations and individuals.

The second gateway ( EUN ) serves all 12 Egyptian universities as well as research institutes connected to ENSTINET . It also provides connectivity to the "project of the future" to connect the most remote schools to the Internet. The gateway has a fiber connection to France (256K), the modernization of which is already in full swing.

An additional gateway provides communications to private providers (128K, fiber to France). This direction (opening your own gateways) is today considered promising by many commercial Internet service providers.

The network segment of Egypt is characterized by more than one access to the global network. In 1994, the Egyptian domain area was divided into three main subdomains, with administration rights transferred to the respective companies. Educational domains (eun.eg and sci.eg) fell under the authority of the same Egyptian University Network (EUN). The government subdomain (gov.eg) was assigned to IDSC/RITSEC. Registration of new domain names in the commercial zone com.eg has been distributed among providers .

The Egyptian Internet consists of more than 80 regional subdomains registered with the EUN (Egyptian University Network). At the same time, the number of third-level domains registered by providers is growing. According to the latest data from www.domainstats.com, there are about 5 thousand resources in the Egyptian domain zone today.

News and information projects are still poorly developed in Egypt (8% of all resources), which is another obstacle to the normal development of the local network segment. Only Cairo Press Review (a resource whose name speaks for itself) can boast of some popularity.

The bulk of the resources are commercial projects (52% of all Egyptian sites). These are rather not representatives of e-commerce, but the sites of banks, corporations and other financial companies. Among them there are resources of general Egyptian significance, such as Egypt Business Center and Egypt Technology Development & High-tech Directory . In addition to them, commercial resource directories are very popular in Egypt: Egypt Yellow Pages , Egypt.com Business Directories and Egypt Trade Pages .

The state is well represented on the Internet: 25 ministries have their own pages. The official website of the government is located at www.parliament.gov.eg . (State Information Service) was created It should be noted that it was through the efforts of the government that the State Information Agency SIS , which effectively disseminates information about Egypt. But the Agency is still only a drop in the ocean - online media in Egypt, as mentioned above, is very poorly developed.

Another approach to developing resources on the web was Egypt's Information Highway Project . IDSC/RITSEC announced the creation of several subnetworks on the Egyptian Internet: tourism, statistical, cultural and medical network.

Tourism here, of course, comes first. The pyramids and sphinxes remain a magnet for travelers. The creation of a network of travel sites is largely due to the fact that recently on the Internet one can increasingly find ridiculous and implausible information about tourism in Egypt. Thus, one citizen announced a sale of pieces of the famous Cheops pyramid. But for the last 11 years, the authorities have prohibited even climbing the pyramids . It is to fill the information void that the development of the travel web in Egypt is planned.

Today there is a fairly serious difficulty in regulating provider relations. Because they developed like an avalanche, the government was unable to provide certain standards or regulations. At the same time, authorities have recently increasingly talked about the need to reduce the number of providers.

Because of this, user preferences often change. It is common for Egypt to change providers in search of better quality and prices. Stability in this is not expected over the next 7-8 years.

From the statistics it becomes clear that in Egypt the computer park is very poorly developed, there are purely technical problems for the development of network infrastructure and there is some confusion among providers. So what are the assumptions about the Egyptian Internet explosion based on, if the country is not even a leader in the region today?

First of all, recent government announcements about solutions in this industry inspire optimism. Perhaps very late, but today a normal climate for investors has emerged in the country (despite the dire situation of the local economy). At the same time, there is a decrease in tax pressure on companies operating in the field of information technology.

But the main thing, according to analysts, is that the first serious steps are being taken to create their own environment of workers in the field of information technology.

It is the resolution of intra-Egyptian problems that is today the main obstacle to the normal development of the Egyptian network segment. Overcoming them is not a complete utopia, given that the country is dominated by an understanding of the need to develop new technologies.

Egypt is often heralded as a country that is about to experience a real Internet boom. First of all, the situation in the region obliges him to do this. Today, Egypt is the main center of television, cinema and the Internet in the Arab information space (the country is often called the “gateway to Africa”).

To implement the plan, first of all, technical problems have to be solved. The first step in this direction was the opening of business parks in large cities (4 in total). At the same time, the Egyptian government expressed its readiness to provide all possible assistance in the implementation of this project.

Of course, Egypt will also have to face competition http://ecom.aport.ru/rus/guide.asp?id=154 from the Middle Eastern states surrounding the country, which have long been competing with each other for the right to be the leader of the “new economy” . However, given a normal atmosphere within the country, Egypt may well take its rightful place in the region.

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The author sincerely thanks Tarek Kamel for his moral support in writing the article.