ICT has been a part of Egypt‟s national development strategy for the past decade,
and the Government has been developing a framework to move the country into
the information age, through promoting partnerships of public, private, civil society
and multilateral stakeholders. However, the reform wave has stimulated the
Egyptian government to speed up the deployment of services and enhance the
current broadband infrastructure. The tremendous demand for more bandwidth
coupled with consumers‟ appetite for video-content, news, and multi-media
services have led the NTRA to introduce a new ICT strategy for broadband: the
“eMisr National Broadband Plan”.
Since 2002, national initiatives allowed manufacturers to provide PCs at affordable
prices and with flexible payment terms to schools and households. In 2004 the
government launched a Broadband Initiative which increased the number of
broadband connections ten folds within four years and brought 24 Mbps ADSL2+
access to residential households. However, despite its successes, Egypt still lags
behind international standards. Mobile and Internet penetration rates are relatively
low in comparison with the rest of the world. By the end of 2011, the number of ADSL
subscribers in Egypt will amount to 1.8 million subscribers and the number of mobile
broadband subscribers will amount to 2.5 million subscribers.
Policy makers in Egypt consider broadband as the engine for development,
especially after the recent political and social reform waves. This vision is in
accordance with the increasing dependence of citizens' on broadband. On the
other hand, challenges that face the Egyptian society on an economic level require
adopting a strategy across different sectors that is mainly dependent on ICT. Many
sectors of the society will require both sufficient broadband infrastructure and the
appropriate applications, to implement national initiatives and projects, such as: eeducation, e-health, e-government, e-civic engagement, ICT in business, ecommerce, and e-content.
eMisr is a National Broadband Plan that proposes different strategic directives to
meet Egypt‟s broadband service needs. To develop eMisr, NTRA has conducted
studies, consultations, workshops and meetings with relevant stakeholders. A joint
study performed by NTRA and Qualcomm addressed consumers‟ affordability for
broadband services in Egypt. Another study with Detecon built a model to forecast
the broadband market growth and to investigate stimulation effects on the
broadband market. World Bank, under a signed agreement with MCIT and NTRA,
has undergone two studies; one to assess strategic options taken by international
decision makers to allow for a proper broadband diffusion, and another to build a
model assessing the viability of different broadband technologies and estimating
the macroeconomic impact of broadband diffusion in Egypt.
The key strategic objectives of the eMisr Plan aim to: 1) Recognize Egypt as a frontrunner in digital communications, 2) Increase job opportunities, 3) Stimulate
economic growth nationwide and foster social cohesion, 4) Harmonize with other
eMisr National Broadband Plan
Executive Summary
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