Price of Egypt’s fourth mobile licence to be known before year-end

Egypt’s telecom regulator is to set the final price for the country’s fourth mobile licence by the second half of this year.

Amr Badawi, CEO of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), made the announcement at a press conference recently.

The licence is being allocated automatically to Telecom Egypt as part of a wide-ranging review that will see the incumbent mobile networks permitted to resell landline services provided by the state-owned telco.

The fate of Telecom Egypt’s 45 per cent stake in Vodafone Egypt is still being debated. There have been concerns that a sale could affect the landline monopoly’s profits though, which are heavily dependent on its Vodafone shares.