VoIP is Liberalized in Egypt!

So VoIP is liberalized in Egypt. The market for telecommunications market was officially deregulated since the start of 2006 according to the WTO agreement.

In fact its telecom market is a leader in the North Africa and Middle East market. All three of its mobile networks have 3G services and are in the midst of deploying wimax networks. Egypt alone had 12 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of 2006.

The Cellular phone market was a duopoly with prices artificially high but witnessed in the past couple of years the traditional price war between the incumbents Mobinil and Vodafone. A 500 minutes outbound local and long distance calling plan currently costs approximately USD $30 as compared to approximately US $90 in 2005. While the current price is not so expensive, it is still above the international price as plans never allow 'unlimited night & weekend minutes.'"

A third GSM 3.5G license was awarded in April 2006 for US$3 billion to a consortium led by the UAE company Etisalat (66%), Egypt Post (20%), the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) (10%), and the NBE's Commercial International Bank (4%), thus moving the market from duopoly to oligopoly.

An interesting bit of information from Wikipedia: "Opportunity cost of conflict
A report[7] by Strategic Foresight Group has calculated the opportunity cost of conflict for Egypt since 1991 is almost $800 billion. In other words, had there been peace since 1991, an average Egyptian citizen would be earning over $3000 instead of $1700 he or she may earn next year."

"Egypt's mineral and energy resources include petroleum, natural gas, phosphates, gold and iron ore." More than a few of them are a good reason to offer Egypt phone numbers on DIDX for sale to the wholesale IP communications companies frrom 170 nations buying, trading and selling phone numbers! Wireless telephony companies can join DIDX and with a softswitch and the right network, a short, simple interop, will be able to sell phone numbers such as from Egypt.

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