The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has met with his Palestinian counterpart Ishaq Sidr to discuss enhancing aspects of cooperation in the ICT field. The meeting has been held on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona, Spain.
During the meeting, the Egyptian side has highlighted Egypt's keenness to support the demands of Palestine at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU). Fostering cooperation in a number of areas, including building digital capabilities through the training institutes affiliated to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), and promoting technological innovation and entrepreneurship have been discussed. This is in addition to presenting the Egyptian experience in transferring numbers, discussing cooperation in the post areas and how to benefit from the Egyptian experience in the field of regulating the telecommunications sector, especially in issues related to infrastructure regulations and the numbering plan.
The ICT Minister has also met with the Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Ahmed Qasim Hanandeh to continue cooperation talks between Egypt and Jordan in the ICT field. The meeting has discussed means to enhance cooperation in the areas of better building digital infrastructure, developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, building digital capabilities, and supporting entrepreneurship. The meeting has also highlighted the significance of promoting cooperation and exchanging experiences between Egypt Post and Jordan Post.
During his participating in WMC, Talaat has also witnessed the signing of an agreement between Telecom Egypt and Huawei to establish its first storage Point of Presence (PoP) for Internet content in Egypt, in the regional data center of Telecom Egypt in Smart Village in Cairo.
Under this agreement, Huawei, through the infrastructure services and connectivity services provided by Telecom Egypt, will provide the latest technologies for content delivery networks, in addition to providing the necessary response to support modern applications in the age of AI. This step paves the way for providing content services with the highest possible efficiency in various fields such as content industry, gamification, e-commerce, finance, health care and government services.
Telecom Egypt new data center, which is the latest and most advanced, provides hosting services for Huawei PoP in Egypt. The center has been designed according to the latest international standards and specifications "UPTIME-TIER III".
The new international data center is connected to Telecom Egypt's ten submarine landing stations located on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, allowing it to connect to more than 60 countries around the world and to provide services to all local and international clients, including companies and individuals.
The center also provides enhanced hosting services and higher levels of diversity with the potential to expand to accommodate the increasing hosting needs, which will further contribute to developing sustainability characteristics and rationalizing energy costs in line with international standards.
The center, with its distinguished capabilities, targets telecom service providers, cloud computing providers, and organizations that are keen to obtain the best exceptional data center services, which take into account the best risk management standards and the lowest data latency. The data center storage area reaches 2000 RU.
Following signing the agreement, the ICT Minister ascertained that Egypt's distinguished geographical location in the heart of the world as a regional and global point for data traffic, in addition to the infrastructure of its submarine cables, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, qualifies it to be a regional hub in the data center industry. He also highlighted Egypt' keenness to indigenize the data center industry, which is one of the most promising industries that contribute to achieving economic growth.
On his part, Telecom Egypt Managing Director and CEO Adel Hamed stated that Telecom Egypt is pleased to cooperate with Huawei to establish the first Internet content storage PoP for Huawei in Egypt. The agreement will maximize the benefits of better indigenizing content services from China by taking advantage of the distinguished infrastructure services provided by Telecom Egypt and Huawei's advanced platform to provide content services.
Huawei Egypt CEO Vincent Sun said that Huawei is pleased with this cooperation with Telecom Egypt, which confirms confidence in its ability to provide the best world-leading solutions.
The two companies will work together to develop a platform for providing content services based on the 20 years of experience in the Egyptian market and Huawei previous business globally. "We are fully prepared to provide the best services in the field of communications to support economic development in line with the Egyptian government's vision towards developing the ICT industry in Egypt.", Sun added.
In a related context, Talaat has held a meeting with President of Huawei Northern Africa Region Terry HE. The meeting has discussed promoting cooperation in a number of fields, including developing communications infrastructure networks, honing digital skills, and using Huawei’s latest technologies related to green ICT to support efforts made in this field, especially with the country’s preparations to host the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is in addition to discussing promoting cooperation in the fields of cloud computing and AI.
The meeting has been attended by the Assistant ICT Minister for Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Mohamed Nasr.
The ICT Minister has also met with Microsoft Corporate Vice President Francesco Venturini. The meeting has discussed the company's plans to support digital solutions based on advanced telecommunications infrastructure and means to expand and build more partnerships with the Egyptian government.
The meeting has been attended by the CEO of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) Amr Mahfouz, the Assistant ICT Minister for Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Mohamed Nasr, the Vice President of Microsoft-Azure for Operations Shawn Hakl, and Microsoft Egypt-Country General Manager Mirna Arif.
