I recently spoke to an executive of a leading ISP in Egypt, and he estimated that no less then 40% of all ADSL lines in Egypt are shared between apartments, which technically is illegal. Sometimes the number of sub-subscribers can reach up to 50 people.
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The problem for ISPs is that people call and complain about services who are not their customers. They thus would like to legalize this black market by being allowed to offer multi-party contracts (which would also bring legal protection to the actual subscribers who are now held accountable for whatever their neighbors are doing on the web). But the government appears to be hesitating.
I find it interesting to see how creative Egyptians are in distribution when the offer doesn’t suit market conditions for whatever reason (while the government two years ago brought prices down, the market would now be big enough for prices to further decline, but the government keeps them up in order to protect smaller ISP from being driven out of the market).
A similar thing happens in the mobile market, where operators in vain kept trying to introduce packages where you buy both a mobile and a line at the same time. But distributors would in most cases tear them apart and sell both separately anyways to better tune their offers to the market.
The next round is coming up, as one of the operators is about to import handsets and SIM cards that via a code system can only be used together.
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40% ??!!
I guess it’s way more than this percent .. I don’t think it’s illegal at all .. I have and ADSL service here at home.. and for reducing my monthly superscription fee I decided to connect my neighbour via a switch and sharing the 150 l.E which I pay each month with them .. besides , It’s kind of expensive here to initiate such a service.. U need a router and a switch which roughly cost about 700 L.E for both as a start .. Regardless the cable which is 1.25 L.E per meter .. I think That’s the real reason of people’s growing setting of small networks anyway .. Personally I do not get any profit out of that so-called business
But of course many others do specially net-cafes.. These are more prevalent than individual users .. They are obliged to use high speed connections ,so they think of sharing it with individual customers in the same building ..
I don’t think that’s illegal .. when superscribing to My ADSL service last year .. The cashier there asked me whether I was a single user or intending to set a network and i answered honestly .. he even asked about number of users and recommended a higher connection for the relatively high number .. They know how market goes and they fully use it .. It’s better than no subscriptions at all , no??
Another phenomenon Is the cables transmitting satellite channels .. it’s very prevalent everywhere in Egypt .. Now that’s what i call illegal specially for decoded channels as ART and Orbit .. Yet It’s a very profitable business And it’s very Money saving for individuals too
It’s true, I originally had bought a long wire and sent it to my local net cafe. I only paid them 60LE a month and it worked well most of the time, but after about 4-5 months, it stopped working so well, until it eventually stopped working. They came over to “fix” it but it never worked.
I’m subscribing now to a real ISP to get reliable service, you get what you pay for.
Very interesting post. I am not surprised at all to learn that the informal market share of the ADSL market is 40%. Actually I would not be surprised if the figure was actually higher. That this is the case does make sense as well. While it is not a perfect match (since people pay/share costs) it is very close to the “quiet encroachment” theory that Asef Bayat at AUC has extensively researched and analyzed – instead of paying the high price for or waiting for eternity to get for water and electricity to their informal homes, people just hook up to the municipal grids and pipes. All very illegal, typically the domain of the informal economy and ubiquitous in Egypt.
I have not looked at the laws and decrees governing this ADSL business, but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.
Regarding ART, I’d love to do a piece on how ART crackers could be the most demanded profession in Egypt these days, but I’m leaving tonight to where the world cup will be played.
At the same time, rumors keep circulating in Cairo that the government will step in and buy ART’s rights in a last-minute-deal to allow terrestrian state channels to show the world cup, but that’s not going to happen.
Very creative of Egyptians! Happens a lot in the third world generally, particularly the tapping of electricity, and unscrupulous shop owners and landlords are as likely to do that as the poor. In the US with wireless internet becoming more and more standard, people piggyback on their neighbours’ connections all the time, or agree to share the cost of the connection in one building – so I guess it’s a matter of opportunity in the end.
Wait, has any Vonage style internet telephone service taken off in Masr yet? Now that would really be fab.
I’m not surprised at all by the 40% figure. However, I believe it is ‘technically’ illegal. I agree with Issander’s comment – for a slightly higher fee I believe those who want a ‘multi-user’ service would appreciate a slightly higher cost for legal protection. Looking at the bigger picture vis-a-vis illegal satellites with descrabmlers, multi-user ADSL, ‘stealing’ electricity and water from the main supply, and even building red-brick houses on technically agricultural land just shows the discrepency between regulation and reality. Ofcourse this is mainly due to a lack of proper planning and policy by the government. So what we have instead is a system of cultural norms that fill the gap. But what I’m concerned about is that without proper ‘hard’ legal protection, the government can always step in and prosecute people on trumped up charges if they step out of line. I think it would be a very interesting study to see how much of the average egyptians every day life activity is technically illegal. Anybody whose ‘slandered’ the president please put your hand up!
line-sharing is huge in Bahrain also, so Bateco (the country’s sole ISP) recently stopped providing unlimited ADSL packages in an act of collective punishment. so now we have a 15GB monthly cap. and the consumers have responded with a movement to boycott Batelco which has even inspired an arabic rap song!
i worte a bit about it here:
http://chanad.weblogs.us/?p=486
Regarding Wireless internet apparently the coverage is pretty big, most networks are unsecured. I talked to Alaa of EGLUG (yup the same one) once about this and he said that EGLUG had tested the coverage in downtown and found it to be pretty high, though I can’t remember off the bat the percentage.
Does anyone know whether parts of the radiospectrum in Egypt is opened? Free wireless broadband internet access in that case, though I doubt that the government would not try to make several bucks off it.
Aly – you were responding to Frederik, I think, not me!
SP – I use Skype all the time to call out of Egypt (both to other computers and real phones). Not familiar with Vonage but don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Frederik – this should all be covered by the Telecoms Regulatory Authority, mish keda? Or are internet issues handled by a different body?
Speaking of the TRA, what’s up with the 3rd license?