Telecom Egypt (TE) has been the sole provider of fixed-line services for over 150 years. TE provides voice telecommunications services, Internet and data services, in addition to wholesale services to other operators via the national backbone transmission network and Egypt's only international gateway it operates.

It is worth mentioning that the network is fully digitalized. TE has also exposure to the Egyptian mobile market via its 25.5% stake in Vodafone Egypt, one of the two mobile operators in Egypt with a 47.

2% market share in terms of subscribers' number. TE had 10.3 mn subscribers as of Q3 2005 with residential subscribers accounting for 91% of the company's subscriber base and almost 70% of its revenues.

TE commands 100% market share implying a penetration rate of 14.5%. The company expects to have 10.6 mn subscribers by end 2005 and subsequently add 1 mn subscribers in 2006 and 0.5 mn in 2007. The 93.

3% owned subsidiary TE Data, which was established in November 2001 to provide Internet and data services, claims to command 29% market share of the country's total 75,300 ADSL subscribers as at August 2005.

As at 9M 2005, TE had 53,000 employees.