Egypt’s oldest mobile network operator, Mobinil with some 30 million subscribers and majorly owned by France Telecom may be prosecuted by the country’s Consumer Protection Agency (CPA) for running misleading adverts about its network quality.
According to Atef Yaacoub, head of CPA, Mobinil on December 22 run advertisements in Egypt’s state-owned daily Al-Akhbarin claiming to be the Egypt’s top mobile phone service provider by data and voice service quality. A move condemned as the measurement was based on its own calculations but with intention of showing the public that the figures were from the National Telecommunications Regulation Authority (NTRA).
This forced NTRA to air its own figures January 4 against the Mobinil’s data and denied to be the source of the figures.
Moinil is now being investigated.
In May 2012, France Telecom bought a 93.9 percent of Mobinil for 1.5bn euros. Mobinil was founded by Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris. Egypt has over 80 million people, 30 million of which are Mobinil’s subscribers which competes with Vodafone Egypt for control.
