Egypt Boosts Digital Transformation: $600M Fiber Optic Investment by Telecom Egypt & 4iG

In February, Egypt Telecom and 4iG Group had already signed an agreement to establish a joint venture.

This joint venture is expected to construct a submarine fiber optic cable to connect Egypt and Albania.

The Egyptian incumbent operator Telecom Egypt and the Hungarian IT services management company 4iG Group are planning to invest $600 million in Egypt’s fiber optic access infrastructure over the next 10 years.

The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday, June 30th, to create a joint venture for this purpose. The signing took place during the Egypt-EU Investment Conference held in Cairo from June 29th to 30th.

In the coming months, 4iG Group and Telecom Egypt will agree on the business model, the exact ownership structure, governance processes, and technological details of the joint venture.

The joint venture will be responsible for building, operating, and marketing 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 submarine fiber optic cable project between Egypt and Albania, unveiled in October 2023.

These initiatives reflect Telecom Egypt’s ambition to strengthen its digital infrastructure and establish itself as a leader in the 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 a future-proof network 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 realization of the government’s digital transformation ambitions, particularly by improving access to broadband for the population.

At the end of 2023, Egypt had 81.2 million internet service subscriptions, according to official data. The country also had 113.9 million telephone subscriptions (fixed and mobile).

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