Dr. Mohamed Salim -Minister of Communications and Information Technology- said that the ministry will finish the final features of mobile virtual license next May, noting that mobile phone companies’ objection – regarding the license issuance- is non-binding to the ministry.
Salim said in an exclusive statement to “Amwal Al Ghad” that the current ongoing discussions aim at finding the most appropriate form to issue the license with, especially as the type of virtual licenses has become very common in a number of countries in the world like the United States and Italy in addition to that Saudi Arabia, which will launch a virtual license during the current year.
He noted that the ministry is keen on launching the license for the development of the mobile market, as well as bringing benefits to Telecom Egypt Company, and to the government at the end, pointing out that the objections by mobile companies is non-binding to the ministry.
He noted that the NTRA is working currently on the mechanisms of issuing the license, according to a manner that should not bring damages to the market or the economic circumstances, in addition to the necessity of taking care not to harm companies that are currently operating in the market and return benefits to the state’s resources.
Dr. Mohamed Salem said that the license will be issued according to an economic legal form, either through a tender or a bid, in order to give any operator the right to obtain the license in a legitimate way – as it is not consider different to any other mobile license, except for renting frequency bandwidth from another operator in the market, beside providing services gradually, as it begins with reselling mobile minutes then reaches providing the full services of voice and data for mobile and fixed lines.
to be mentioned that a number of officials of the mobile companies in Egypt have confirmed that issuing the license will not be economically feasible during the current time, as they said that mobile companies are suffering from weak revenues and diminished profit rates, when compared to the last years, and this what threatens the issuance of the new license with failure.
