Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has taken a set of measures and initiatives to reduce the burdens on citizens and facilitate their daily activities to keep pace with the precautionary measures taken by the state to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
These initiatives included the support of e-learning during the period of suspension of schools and universities by increasing the capacities of internet packages by 20 percent, as well as making the browsing service available to "Knowledge Bank", educational platforms and websites free of charge, to ensure that the educational process is not affected during the suspension period.
According to a statement by Communication Minister Amr Talaat last Sunday, “The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology pumped about LE 30 billion to expand the international internet corridors coming to Egypt at the end of 2019, to increase Egypt's internet capacities by about 30 percent in 2020,"
Talaat added that those capacities have contributed to a significant improvement in the quality of internet services. He noted that without these new capacities, we would have been in a major crisis, especially in light of the high demand from all segments of society with the precautionary measures taken by the state against coronavirus spread, including allowing employees to work from home and activating distant education.
On the slow internet speed, he pointed out that the decline in internet services is a bit of a global problem and is not only in Egypt, after various countries of the world have allowed working from home through reliance on the World Wide Web.
Egypt’s broadband internet speeds are among the slowest in the world. According to report by Speedtest in April 2017 Egypt ranked 146th out of 150 countries for fixed broadband download speeds, and just 95th for mobile internet speeds.