Telecoms reforms put Egypt and Lebanon on divergent paths

To sustain growth in its telecoms sector, Egypt's government was looking to "unify" licences to enable the nation's mobile operators to offer fixed-line and internet services.

"We need to look into how to organise the market between the four players," said Hany Mahmoud, the recently appointed communications and technology minister. "We have no plans to get another player into the market, so we are planning to introduce a universal licence where all the four operators can offer all telecoms services."

Egypt now has three mobile operators - Mobinil, Etisalat Misr and Vodafone Egypt - and one fixed-line operator - Telecom Egypt (TE) the state-owned operator that has a 45 per cent stake in Vodafone Egypt.

For years, TE has been keen to take out a larger chunk of the mobile sector, one of North Africa's largest.

It was widely believed that a fourth mobile licence would have been awarded to TE, but this licence reform would ease the state operator into the mobile domain with a majority of the market.