The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has witnessed the signing of a cooperation agreement between Telecom Egypt, the first integrated telecom operator in Egypt and one of the largest subsea cable operators in the region, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The aim is to activate the second ICANN Managed Root Server (IMRS) installation in Africa, in Telecom Egypt’s Regional Data Hub (RDH) in Cairo.
IMRS is part of the Root Server System (RSS) for launching the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). The new IMRS installation will improve Internet user experience and ensure that Internet queries from Africa can be answered within the region, rather than relying on networks and servers in other parts of the world.
The agreement was signed by ICANN Interim President and CEO Sally Costerton and the Managing Director and CEO of Telecom Egypt Mohamed Nasr, in the presence of the Deputy ICT Minister for Infrastructure Raafat Hindy; ICANN Regional Vice President for Stakeholder Engagement in the Middle East and Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) Regional Office in Istanbul Baher Esmat; and representatives of the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA).
The ICT Minister emphasized that the IMRS installation will improve Internet connectivity in Africa. This will pave the way for rendering decent digital services to citizens in Africa and driving digital transformation, contributing to achieving economic and social development in African countries.
The ICT Minister pointed out that Egypt cooperates with specialized international institutions and African countries to bridge the digital gap and improve Internet access. He stressed the importance of installing IMRS in enhancing resilience and securing Internet infrastructure in Egypt and Africa.
Talaat referred to projects implemented by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) to enable high-speed Internet in the villages targeted within the Decent Life initiative. He presented the efforts made to build the villages’ digital capacities to achieve technological and economic empowerment by building a pool of freelancers specializing in or capitalizing on digital technologies in remote work.
Talaat highlighted the significance of working with a large language model (LLM) to enrich online Arabic content and produce added value that could benefit the country. He pointed to the data classification and exchange law that MCIT is working on.
Nasr commented that the new IMRS installation will ensure that Internet queries from Africa can be answered within the region, rather than relying on networks and servers in other parts of the world. The cluster will improve the user experience in Egypt and across the region, reducing latency and the time it takes for a website to load, especially during peak Internet usage periods. This will bring immediate benefits to Internet users, not only in Egypt but across the African continent. The new IMRS installation will also reduce the impact of a potential cyberattack on the continent or that of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack.
For her part, Costerton remarked that the IMRS deployment in Cairo represents a significant advancement in enhancing Africa’s technical infrastructure. Egypt’s strategic position as a digital influencer in the region is of paramount importance. With this second IMRS installation in Africa, ICANN commitment to the Coalition for Digital Africa project in the digital transformation in Africa remains unwavering. This achievement strengthens Internet infrastructure, not only in Egypt but across the entire region.
Hosting the new IMRS installation in Cairo will benefit Egypt by improving the Internet user experience and reducing the risk of being taken offline as a result of a cyberattack. The installation of the IMRS in Egypt will add crucial capacity to support growth in Internet use across the African continent. This, in turn, is expected to drive economic expansion and create opportunities for Africa’s potential Internet users. Furthermore, with two separate IMRS cluster locations on the continent, Cairo and Nairobi, as well as higher bandwidth and data processing capacity, the risk of the Internet going down because of a cyberattack will be significantly reduced.
The new IMRS is being hosted within the Regional Data Hub, Telecom Egypt’s largest, international, certified Tier III data center. RDH is connected with a state-of-the-art fully meshed network providing access to 14 submarine cables, with this number set to increase to 18 by 2025.
ICANN was formed in 1998 as a non-profit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world. Its mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet.
https://rebrand.ly/81ymyp2
TelecomEgypt ICANN
وزارة الاتصالات وتكنولوجيا المعلومات-مصر
