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Cairo, 01 February 2008 |
National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), under the chairmanship of Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr. Tarek Kamel, decided Friday to oblige internet service providers (ISPs) and Telecom Egypt (TE) to compensate all internet users in Egypt by exempting them from a one month free subscription.
Telecom Egypt will exempt dial-up users (0777 and 0707 services) from the fees of dial-up calls during January, 2008. Both broadband subscribers and companies using leased lines will be offered a one month free subscription through the ISPs
Web hosting services and virtual private network (VPN) do not account for the exemption is not valid for as they do not offer internet services.
Dr. Kamel has been following up the situation around the clock through an operation room and an emergency task force including: Telecom Egypt (TE) Chairman Eng. Aqil Beshir, National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) Executive Chairman Dr. Amr Badawy and senior executives of ISPs.
A damage to two submarine cables in the Mediterranean had earlier caused a cut off in internet services and international communications at contact centers in Egypt Wednesday at 6 am. Accordingly, a partial 70% internet disconnection has occurred nationwide, while international communications at offshore call centers have been affected by 30%. Slight problems also erupted with phone calls to Europe and the US.
TE has successfully managed to contain the crisis after immense effort from internet companies to direct a large part of internet trafficking to Singapore and Hong Kong as well as utilizing additional capacities on alternative cables to Italy to restore internet and communications services in Egypt by 55% by Friday evening. Call center companies have partly regained the service through the extra capacities provided.
Two ships have already departed south France and Italy at the request of cables of Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) and the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4), the owners of the two marine cables. The first ship is reaching the first malfunction site Sunday at dawn, while the second is arriving in the other site Tuesday evening. Repairing the two cables is foreseen to take a week.
Meanwhile, TE and NTRA will call on the two cable companies to recompense ISPs and call centers for the losses suffered during the malfunction.
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