The government will replace 95 percent of copper cables with fiber ones by 2020 to increase the speed of the internet in Egypt, according to Deputy Speaker of the Communications and Information Technology Committee, Ahmed Zidane.
Zidane remarked that the committee filed a complaint to the Ministry of Communication about the low speed of the internet in Egypt, referring that the government has replaced until now 60 percent of copper cables with fiber ones .
"In 2015, 43.3 percent of the Egyptian population used the internet. This share is projected to grow to 53.5 percent in 2019," according to Statista, a statistics portal providing statistics and studies from more than 22,500 sources.
In March, Egypt inaugurated two factories set to produce fiber optic cables to meet local demand and export.
The adoption of the Digital Transformation Strategy by the Egyptian government has led to quick developments in the technological sector, a move that President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has encouraged.
In line with this strategy, 16 cities in Egypt are set to be connected via fiber optic cables, which provide the highest speed of data transmission.
The move towards the production and export of fiber optic cables comes as part of the government’s smart cities move and President Sisi’s “Egypt Produces Technology” initiative.
The Egyptian government, represented by the Ministry of Communications, inaugurated on March 13 the first phase of the factories that will produce the fiber optic cables. In cooperation with the Chinese, the factories are set to meet local demand and export.
The factory aims to manufacture the "Core" or mold, a thin ultra-clear glass transporting light, which is one of the most important components of fiber optical cables. Only a limited number of factories in the world produce this material, meaning that Egypt is set to penetrate a very important market that enjoys very high demand.
Over the past four years, Telecom Egypt has been working on replacing copper wires in all Egyptian governorates with fiber optic wires. As of June 2017, the company had replaced 40 percent of the wires. It aims to extend fiber optic cables in new cities, including the New Administrative Capital.
According to an international research, fiber cables have many great benefits that make them more practical, effective and efficient compared with copper wires.
The comparison between fiber cables and copper wires comes down to one key point: speed. The speed of the photons in fiber optic cables is much higher than that of the electrons in the copper wires. Fiber optic cables are only 31 percent slower than the speed of light!
Source: http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/2/62602/95-of-copper-cables-to-be-replaced-with-fiber-ones