The Case of Egypt
History of Internet in Egypt
The first Internet gateway in Egypt was set up in October 1993 by the Egyptian Universities Network (EUN) via a 9.6 Kbps link to the European Academic and Research Network (EARN). The Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) that used to play a major role in introducing the Internet to the Egyptian society, was also connected through the same gateway. Since that date, EUN started offering Internet access to the research and education sector, whereas IDSC providing Internet services to the governmental sector. In 1994, IDSC leased for the first time in Egypt a digital international Internet connection and invested in another gateway to run parallel to the EUN. In order to encourage the diffusion of Internet services all over the country, the government allowed IDSC to offer free Internet access not only to government entities, but also to private sector, international organizations as well as civil society.
In December 1995, a decision was taken by the government, in coordination with the incumbent carrier Telecom Egypt (TE), to liberalize the Internet market and allow private sector ISPs to step in and offer commercial services to end-users. This was in fact one of the earliest landmarks in the move towards liberalizing telecommunications services in the Egyptian market. The number of ISPs increased from twelve in 1996 to almost forty five in 1999 while the total number of Internet users has grown from few thousands to 200,000 during the same period of time.10
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