Investments of 21.5 billion Egyptian pounds (five billion dollars) are required to upgrade Egypt’s telephone network through 2005, according to Egypt Telecommunication Company head, Aqil Bashir. An estimated EP 16.5 billion will be needed to raise the teledensity rate from 8.5 percent to 17 percent, reported Al-Ahram.
The investments would be required to finance the installation of new air and ground networks and to establish new telephone switching stations.
Bashir maintained that the national telecom company had commissioned a group of experts to determine new fees for telecommunication services. A new tariff system, expected to be introduced in the near future, would attempt to level price discrepancies between different strata of Egyptian society.
Egypt Telecom announced earlier that it would complete the installation of 256,000 new telephone lines nationwide by summer’s end, and that it had already installed 124,000 new telephone lines during the month of July. Some 1,165 new public phones were also installed in July. — (Mena Report)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
