Although Internet has been here for a short time, in one year, 31 new Internet service providers were created in Cairo and Alexandria. Today Egypt now has over 40 operational ISPs in several cities including Sinai

Facts and Obligations that govern ISPs in Egypt

1. Because the ISP business emerged suddenly and was not expected to develop this fast, the government was unable to provide certain standards or rules to govern their work in the market. meanwhile, it is trying to control this phenomena and find a way to limit the number of ISPs for a few reasons coming later in this section.
2. Due to government regulations, ISPs are to rent their bandwidth from government at very high prices. Still the government possesses only 2MB link. Till now this link is over saturated and more than this, this 2MB is sold to to the ISPs causing bottlenecks and and hence an extremely bad performance from the ISPs. several  ISPs are currently working on an International link and therefore has to pay major rent to the government of about 3 to 4 times as much as other ISPs.
3. The availability of the phone lines to the ISPs was and still adds to the difficulty of their setup. Unfortunately, the reason for this is not purely technical but is based on other factors governed by relations and connections on the government.

Due to these reasons, Internet users in Egypt never feel obliged to stay with one ISP but keep rotating amongst them to get the best performance in the market. due to the same reasons, the ISPs that have international links are probably the fastest now in the business.

several studies and statistics has proven that Egypt is now on of the three fastest growing Internet markets in the world if not the fastest. Still the number of Internet users now is considered negligible to the expected amount during the next couple of years

Numbers ...

1. The population of Egypt is now more than 60 million citizens.
2. Citizens in Cairo only are about 20 millions.
3. Of these 20 millions, from 2 to 3 are well educated and working in the public and private sectors.
4. About 1 million citizens are now students at high level education.
5. Of these 20 million in Cairo only, the target of internet customers is estimated by at least 350,000 citizens.
6. About 2000 customers are now using Internet through the government.
7. 20,000 users now connect to the Internet through private sector ISPs.
8. InTouch, that has the biggest share of customers in the market has about 2400 customers.

Therefore, Internet has proven that it is one of the fastest growing services for the past year and is expected to keep growing for the next 7-10 years until it reaches stability and customers keep rotating from a company to another.