Egypt’s telecoms regulator will take further legal action to lower the fee Egypt’s landline monopoly Telecom Egypt must pay to connect fixed-line calls to mobile phones, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The regulator first called for lower fees in 2008, after Telecom Egypt complained that high rates — known as interconnection fees — were making it less competitive.
A Cairo court halted the move on Sunday, siding with mobile firm Mobinil, which had sued to keep the original rates intact and has been accounting for its interconnection revenues and costs based on the old prices.
"We will certainly appeal," Al-Shorouk quoted Omar El-Sherif, a legal adviser to the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA), as saying in reference to Sunday’s court ruling.
"We will carefully study the ruling to determine the points of the appeal, and announce our measures at a later time," he said.
Officials at the NTRA were not immediately available for comment.
Mobinil leads Egypt’s competitive mobile market by subscribers, followed by Vodafone’s Egyptian unit.
