Internet in Egypt
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Broadband Internet access was introduced commercially to Egypt in 2000 as ADSL. The service was offered in select central offices in big cities such as Cairo and Alexandria and gradually spread to cover many more Governorates of Egypt. There are numerous (220 according to regulatory authority numbers) ISP's in Egypt offering ADSL service although only four companies own the infrastructure and they are called class A ISP's (Egynet, Link.net, TE Data, and NOL) which sell to class B ISP's which are 8 major companies which furthermore sells to the rest of the 208 ISP. It is worth mentioning that broadband Internet in Egypt for the home user is still at a very poor level of service mainly due to the communication infrastructure and poorly connected phone lines.
Estimated Number of subscribers: 100,000 according to a statement by Egypt's Communication and Information Technology minister Dr. Tarek Kamel in Ahram newspaper on Sunday 5 March 2006.
The minister of the Egyptian Telecommunications Tarek Kamel said in the July 2007 news that the ADSL would be turned from Unlimited to Limited with Quota at a starting price of 45 LE Pounds for the 256k/64k and a 2GB limit for the download and so on, however almost all the ADSL users especially the students and users of unlimited ADSL refused it such an offer, most users has come to a conclusion that if this plan would be imposed they would cancel their subscription because they wanted the Internet to be Unlimited as is. The plan was to start the Limited ADSL Packages the 1st of September 2007. It turned out that Dr. Tarek Kamel was to aim specific offering at different price range different individuals unable to subscribe for an Unlimited package.
As such the Unlimited packages remained as is and available through all major ISPs with no changes in price, while the Limited ADSL price range are now offered at a discounted price.
In April 2008 ADSL2+ was introduced in Egypt at speeds up to 24mbit, now most ISPs capped all the unlimited ADSL offering to a quota between 100GB and 150GB per month calling it a Fair Usage Policy, all speeds from 256k/64k up to 24mbit are capped to up to 150gb per month, ISPs stated that the 150GB quota was huge and users can download up to 60 large movies, 10000 large songs, browse endlessly and send up to 2 million emails a month, most users are divided upon this capping especially those who are heavy P2P users, going above the monthly quota would result in throttling speed of 64kbps for the rest of the month.
There's an alternative offer from 256k to 2mbit ranging from 2GB a month to 15GB a month.
Most ISPs even though capping to 100-150GB a month still claim the offers as Unlimited, also nobody had any idea about the Fair Usage Policy, the ISP's websites got the FUP in English and placed in hard-to-navigate places plus most of the technical support and representatives are denying that any FUP is in place when it's in fact otherwise possibly in fear of customers cancelling their subscription at the thought of being capped, unfortunately there isn't much honesty to be found in any ISP in Egypt, the service however has improved dramatically as of late in terms of performance during the whole 2007 till now (April 2008).
30 January 2008
The Internet service in Egypt and the Middle East has been affected due to a breakage of two marine cables connecting Egypt to the world. The two cables are FLAG and SMW4 and they will be repaired as soon as possible. Due to unstable weather conditions it is difficult to determine a restoration time-frame.
TE Data users will not be totally disconnected from the Internet, as the company has a third international gateway to the Internet, SWM3. However, users will suffer slowness until the issue is resolved.
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