Friday March 29th, 2024
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Egypt’s Internet is Getting a Massive Infrastructure Boost Soon

Fibre optics are knocking on our doors.

Staff Writer

In a spot of fibrous news this fine week, Telecom Egypt (TE) – Egypt’s sole telecommunications entity for nearly 160 years – has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mauritius-based telecommunications company Liquid Telecom to link up Southern Africa’s fibre optic cable network to that of the rest of the world. That’s a 60,000-kilometre-long infrastructural connection, folks.

The collaboration between both companies, lovingly titled “The One Africa,” aims to extend the fibre optic network from Cape Town all the way to Cairo and Sudan. Though no details or dates have been mentioned yet, the plan itself is pretty much guaranteed. What does this mean for us regular folk? Should things go smoothly, TE should be able to connect its Internet users to Liquid Telecom’s superfast (read: 21st century) fibre optic network. Perchance to borrow the entire OITNB boxset in five minutes.

Egypt’s data infrastructure, put politely, leaves quite a lot to desire. So a step in this general direction can only spell good things for the country. As for how to outfit the entire country with fibre optics, that’s a story for another decade.