PM Attends Official Launch of 5G Mobile Services in Egypt
Taarek Refaat
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly attended the celebration held by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to mark the official launch of 5G mobile services in Egypt.
The ceremony was held at the foot of the Pyramids in Giza Governorate, in the presence of several ministers, the Governor of Giza, and several former ministers of communications and information technology.
The ceremony was attended by Mohamed Shamroukh, Executive Chairman of the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA); Mohamed Nasr El-Din, Managing Director and CEO of Telecom Egypt; Mohamed Kamal Abdallah, CEO and Managing Director of Vodafone Egypt; Yasser Shaker, CEO of Orange Egypt; and Hazem Metwally, CEO of E& Misr.
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In New Cairo, the per capita access to green space in gated communities is 216 sqm. In social housing nearby, it's 26 sqm. In older Cairo districts like Shubra, it's less than 0.1 sqm. The simulation is relentless. Despite all this, billboards endure – for good reason. Ultimately, they're the most democratic form of elite messaging. Memon is far from bearish on billboards. 'Traditional advertising isn't dead. It's evolving.' He points to a Nielsen study that found combining billboards with digital ads boosts message amplification by 60%. 'When London banned candy ads on public transport, sales of those products dropped 60%. That's how powerful outdoor media still is.' 'You don't need a phone, a data plan, or an algorithm to be reached. You just need to exist in public,' Amgad explains. And in that sense, the billboard becomes a curious sort of civic document. It shows you what the state, or at least the market, thinks Egypt should look like. And for all their distortions, billboards can also inspire. A clever campaign. A moment of colour on a grey commute. A family glimpsing a different future – even if it's unattainable. Egypt is in the midst of an identity shift. The post-revolution euphoria has long faded, replaced by infrastructural overhauls, capital migration to the desert, and a public increasingly anxious about where it belongs. In this context, billboards are not the disease. They are the symptom – and sometimes, the distraction. They represent both Egypt's most sincere ambitions and its deepest contradictions. They are monuments to optimism and inequality. And they are built to last. The question is not whether the billboards will change. It's whether Cairo will – or whether it will continue to be a city that cannot see itself, only the version sold back to it at 1080p, three storeys high, and payable in 100 monthly installments.
