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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 June 1999 Issue No. 433 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 June 1999 Issue No. 433
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Books Living Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Internet via satellite
By Rehab SaadThe Internet was introduced to Egypt some eight years ago. Users were limited then, and the Internet was mainly used for checking e-mail and navigating web sites for fun and information. Now the picture is changing. The Internet is becoming increasingly important in business life because it is an essential medium for e-commerce as well as for other business tools such as marketing and promotion.
Because of increasing pressure on Internet service providers due to a rising demand for the World Wide Web over the past couple of years, Internet via satellite has entered the Egyptian market. Companies offering access to the Internet through satellite technology, such as Interpacket and Teleglobe of the US and the Kuwaiti company Zaknet, have started operating. "The market and the demand are large enough for all of these companies to operate in Egypt with a profit," said Tamer Zanati, business development manager for United Communications, an Egyptian company which has started offering the new service.
Compared to the older, terrestrial means of access, the advantage of this service is that there is a direct connection to the World Wide Web through a satellite "that transmits information directly from the US to users in the Middle East," Zanati said.
"This eliminates traffic over multiple tiers of the Internet structure, reducing communication costs while speeding access to the Internet." he added.
The growing number of Internet users in the Middle East and Egypt in the past few years has led to overcrowding on terrestrial lines, affecting the quality of the service by reducing transmission speed. Internet via satellite is mainly suited for big and medium-sized companies rather than the small firm or individual user since the nature of the former's business requires high speed communication.
However, Internet providers are now thinking of smaller users as well, and there are attempts to tailor a service to cater to these, although it is not certain to what extent such a market would be viable. "We plan to introduce a service for smaller and medium-sized companies on a trial basis with a selected number of customers for two or three months. Then after this trial period, the service will be ready for commercial launch," said Nagi Anis, vice-president of United Communications, which is offering the Internet via satellite through its I-SkySat service.
"Receiving data by satellite means a lot to a client. It means faster download, faster browsing and faster connection," said Amr El-Messidi of Link Egypt, an Internet provider using I-SkySat. "Not all companies are using satellite, so we have a privilege here."
"This concept of using a satellite for Internet service is totally new in the Egyptian market, but it is for those who need a good service and not a bad one," said Tarek Abu Alam, operations manager for Soficom Communications, a company using the satellite service.
Ironically, this advanced Internet via satellite technology seems to have been devised for countries whose infrastructure is not able to operate the Internet efficiently. Although the US is the home of the original satellite technology on which this service is built, "there, the infrastructure is great and bandwidth is not expensive, so why should they use satellite?" asked Messidi.
