Egypt’s telecommunications infrastructure began to improve over the past year, after suffering a period of lack of investments following the 25 January uprising in 2011.
Egypt ranked 146th among 150 countries with regard to ADSL broadband. Egypt was also ranked 95th in terms of mobile internet service, according to Ookla, a global leader in broadband testing.
In the East Africa region, broadband in Egypt was faster than its counterpart in Libya and mobile internet in Egypt was proven to be faster than in Algeria and Sudan only.
The average broadband download speed in the third and fourth quarters of 2016 was estimated at 4.02MB/s, which is much slower than the average global mobile internet speed of 7.75MB/s.
While these two speeds are slow, they have increased by 34 and 59% respectively, compared to the same period in 2015.
The government has a significant stake in Telecom Egypt and its subsidiary TE Data. The latter monopolises the ADSL services through only offering to lease the lines to other companies.
In this report, we will review the ADSL speed for each of the internet service providers in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to Ookla’s partner Egypt Speedtest.
TE Data topped the list of download speeds from the internet, with an average speed reaching 9.1MB/s, while upload was estimated at 0.87MB/s—ranking last among all other countries measured.
Vodafone Egypt came second in download speeds via ADSL at 8.1MB/s but topped upload speeds across Egypt at 3.4MB/s.
Orange Egypt was ranked third in terms of download speed at 7.5MB/s and second in terms of upload speed with 2.25 MB/s.
Etisalat Misr was ranked fourth on the list, with a download speed of 5.2MB/s. It also ranked third in upload speed with 1.4MB/s.
| Company | Download Speed in MB/s | Upload Speed in MB/s |
| TE Data | 9.14 | 0.87 |
| Vodafone | 8.15 | 3.4 |
| Orange | 7.48 | 2.25 |
| Etisalat | 5.18 | 1.43 |
