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By Nayera Eid
Egypt’s telecom regulator, the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) has set a strategic plan to cover all main roads with telecom signal strength towers, a source in the NTRA told Amwal Al Ghad.
The project is expected to cost 750 million Egyptian pounds (around $48.2 million).
General Authority for Roads, Bridges, and Land Transport (GARBLT) has executed four roads representing 85 percent of the project and is currently working to complete the rest.
Sources added that the GARBLT is running improvement works simultaneously with establishing the telecom towers aiming to cover 100 percent of the roads by the end of execution.
Costs of coverage will be distributed between the NTRA and mobile operators according to the traffic flow on these roads as well as their significance.
In February 2003, the Telecom Act (Law 10/2003) was issued and ratified. The law regulates all types of telecommunications in Egypt through eighty-seven articles included in seven chapters.
The law empowered NTRA and defined its goals, responsibilities, and structure. According to this law, the NTRA has full autonomy in terms of financing its activities and recruitment of staff. It also has the power to monitor performance of operators, penalise deviations from licenses as well as managing frequency utilization for commercial and governmental use.
The law also regulates the licensing procedures, permits for importation, manufacture or assembly of telecommunications equipment as well as frequency spectrum management sector.
Moreover, the law describes cooperation between NTRA and other authorities for national security purposes. The seventh chapter deals with penalties for criminal acts related to telecommunications sector such as demolishing telecom networks infrastructure.
© Amwal Alghad 2016
