Atef Helmy, Egypt’s Minister of Communications & Information Technology, has revealed that the government is still finalizing the details of the long-awaited unified license award and ‘the establishment of a national entity for the development of the infrastructure considered the main backbone for the ICT sector’, Telegeography.com reported on July 3, 2014. Although the process was initially earmarked to start on 30 June 2014, that date passed without any further developments.

As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in January 2014 Egyptian telecoms regulator the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) agreed to introduce unified licenses, allowing companies to offer both fixed line and mobile services using a single concession; it is expected that the move will allow fixed line incumbent Telecom Egypt (TE) to enter the mobile market. Further, in May 2014 TE agreed to hand over the requested concession fee.