10 December 2021

The National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) has penned a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) to create a permanent joint committee to develop the system for regulating free competition in Egypt’s telecom market.

The Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) said that the cooperation is designed to synergise their efforts at attracting more investment while integrating work mechanisms related to regulation and supervision. In addition, the pair is aiming to ‘restrain monopolies that may negatively affect the telecom services rendered to citizens’.

“The MoU reflects NTRA’s keenness to cooperate with ECA to support the telecom market and create an enabling environment for competition to attract investments through exchanging experiences,” it said.

According to the statement, the joint committee will be responsible for developing frameworks for the cooperation between the two sides. It will also harness ECA capabilities and NTRA expertise to monitor the telecom sector regularly and promote competition in the sector in a way that helps improve the quality of services and facilitate citizens’ access to them, especially with the current orientation towards digitisation.

The committee will also work to open new markets in that promising sector, attract more investments, combat any practices that may hinder free competition, while early predicting and preventing economic practices leading to monopolies that may have negative effects on the market.