Egypt: Incumbent operator Telecom Egypt and Hungarian IT services management company 4iG Group plan to invest $600 million in fibre optic access infrastructure in the country over the next 10 years

Egypt’s incumbent operator Telecom Egypt and Hungarian IT services management company 4iG Group plan to invest $600 million in fibre optic access infrastructure in Egypt over the next 10 years. On Sunday 30 June, the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding with a view to creating a joint venture to this end. The agreement was signed at the Egypt-EU Investment Conference held in Cairo from 29 to 30 June.

Over the coming months, 4iG Group and Telecom Egypt will agree on the business model, exact ownership structure, governance processes and technological details of the joint venture. The joint venture will build, operate and market a wholesale FTTH (Fiber-To-The-Home) and FTTS (Fiber-To-The-Site) access infrastructure with a capacity of at least 6 million homes.

This new Memorandum of Understanding comes five months after 4iG Group and Telecom Egypt signed a cooperation agreement for their fibre optic submarine cable project between Egypt and Albania, to be unveiled in October 2023. These initiatives reflect Telecom Egypt’s ambition to strengthen its digital infrastructure and establish itself as a leader in a context of accelerated digital transformation.

“Through this agreement, which will leverage our respective strengths in the ICT sector, we will accelerate Egypt’s digital transformation with the future-ready network for the future that will enhance 5G and many other next-generation services such as IoT and enterprise networks,” said Mohamed Nasr, CEO of Telecom Egypt.

The partnership will also accelerate the achievement of the government’s digital transformation ambitions, in particular by improving broadband access for the population. At the end of 2023, Egypt had 81.2 million subscriptions to Internet services, according to official figures. The country also had 113.9 million telephone subscriptions (fixed and mobile).