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Middle East Eye
4 days ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
How Ramses telecom centre fire exposed Egypt's digital vulnerability
A blaze at Cairo's vital Ramses Exchange crippled telecom, banking and transport systems across Egypt, exposing how years of centralisation and opaque governance have left the country's digital backbone critically exposed. On Monday, 7 July, at around 4pm Cairo local time (2pm GMT), a fire broke out on the upper floors of Ramses data centre in downtown Cairo - a building underpinning much of Egypt's digital connectivity. Minutes later, mobile networks went down. Internet connectivity in at least 20 of Egypt's 27 provinces vanished or became almost inaccessible. Banking apps and payment terminals ceased to function. Emergency hotlines and flight operations were disrupted. For hours, the digital infrastructure of the Arab world's most populous nation malfunctioned. The following day, the government announced that the facility had gone out of service. The fire killed four employees inside the building and injured at least 27 others, including firefighters. The deaths and ensuing chaos reignited scrutiny of safety standards at critical sites. On Thursday evening, just after firefighters had extinguished the blaze, a smaller fire reignited on the upper floor, catching everyone by surprise. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters In the aftermath of the incident, Communications and Information Technology Minister Amr Talaat claimed that emergency services were unaffected. But the fact-checking platform Saheeh Masr proved otherwise: ambulance, police and fire hotlines were all down in multiple provinces. Meanwhile, life in the capital - as well as in Giza, Alexandria and other major provinces - came to a standstill until later the next day. The financial technology sector took a heavy blow. Mobile payment platforms collapsed, ATMs froze and card machines in shops stopped working. The National Bank of Egypt and Banque Misr issued official apologies to their clients. People watch as firefighters extinguish a blaze at the telephone exchange and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology building in central Cairo on 7 July 2025 (AFP) Thousands of Egyptians without enough cash on hand could not fuel their vehicles, pay at restaurants, or use ride-hailing apps. Others were unable to withdraw money from ATMs or transfer funds. Even parents trying to contact their children in day care were cut off. Later that evening and into the night, the Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed that airport systems had been disrupted, resulting in delays to 69 flights. Egypt's stock exchange suspended trading the following day. Middle East Eye spoke with experts and technology activists who shed light on the scale of the crisis, but requested anonymity due to safety concerns. 'This was not just a glitch. It was a national crisis,' said one communications security expert. 'A single strike on one building paralysed a nation's infrastructure.' Answers demanded As with many fires over the past decades, even before an investigation was launched - and while firefighters were still battling the blaze - officials were quick to pin the incident on 'an electrical short circuit'. However, the fallout quickly reached the lower house of parliament, where lawmakers called for accountability. MP Maha Abdel Nasser described the incident as a 'technological stroke' that froze public services. She filed an urgent inquiry with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, warning of 'immense damage' to governance and public trust. Another MP, Freddy Elbaiady, submitted a similar inquiry, but was ironically unable to send it electronically as the parliament's portal was down. 'This is not about a fire,' he told local media outlets. 'It's about a national system built around one outdated switchboard.' The Ramses facility is not an ordinary node. Built in 1927 under King Fuad I, it originally served as the national hub for telegraph exchange and telephone services. Over time, the centre evolved into Egypt's communications hub, now hosting the Cairo Internet Exchange, inter-operator routing systems and submarine cable landings that connect the country to the global web. 'This is not about a fire. It's about a national system built around one outdated switchboard' - Freddy Elbaiady, MP Despite the communications ministry's claim that Ramses is not the sole hub, metrics suggest otherwise. A public update on X confirmed that network data show national connectivity in Egypt at 62 percent of ordinary levels amid the fire. Masaar, a technology rights foundation, published a research paper on the day following the fire, concluding that the outage seemed immediate and impacted several internet service providers simultaneously - evidence of the Ramses centre's pivotal role in routing internet traffic across the country. The Cairo-based foundation confirmed Egypt's over-reliance on a centralised and outdated telecom infrastructure, where a single incident can trigger sweeping nationwide disruption. Masaar further warned that unless serious investment is made to modernise and diversify the country's digital infrastructure, future disruptions - whether caused by natural disasters, technical failure or cyber-attacks - will remain a real and recurring threat to both state institutions and daily life. 'It is the heart of the whole system. If it stops beating, the body collapses,' a former engineer at the state-owned operator, Telecom Egypt (rebranded as WE), told MEE. Foreseeable outcome Though the fire's cause may have been accidental, telecom analysts argue that the outcome was foreseeable. Experts say basic safeguards - such as failover routes, decentralised data centres and automated recovery protocols - were either missing or ineffective. 'This was a preventable collapse,' said a Cairo-based telecom consultant. 'No critical facility should be a 'single point of failure'. Egypt's billions in digital transformation mean nothing without redundancy.' Technically, a single point of failure is a component that, if it fails, brings down the entire system. It is a critical flaw when no backups or contingency systems are in place. For decades, Egypt's government has been known for tightening its grip on communications services. During the January 2011 uprising, Ramses Exchange reportedly served as the command post for communications blackout and surveillance on activists reportedly ordered by security agencies. In the early hours of 28 January, dubbed 'the Friday of Fury', Egypt's mobile networks and internet services were entirely cut off. Data routing was pulled from global gateways, as later confirmed by organisations such as the OpenNet Initiative. Although Egypt's telecom sector has been officially liberalised, it remains tightly state-controlled. 'This was a preventable collapse' - Telecom consultant 'Telecom Egypt, which is majority-owned by the state, dominates fixed-line infrastructure and leases the backbone to other operators,' an independent telecom consultant said. 'The National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), which is meant to be independent, is structurally tied to the incumbent ministry,' he added. The World Bank's 2020 Digital Economy Report highlighted this clash of interests, noting: 'The NTRA's dual role as regulator and policy executor creates a high risk of bias… in favour of Telecom Egypt.' The communications minister confirmed in press statements that 'all services have been transferred to alternative centres', but critics argue this confirms that services were centralised at Ramses before the fire. By Wednesday, services had been gradually restored within two days after the incident, but trust remains damaged. Lawmakers have called for transparency amid calls for telecom reform, while the government continues to insist it was an isolated event. Amid such demands, no senior official has accepted responsibility to date. The government has yet to issue a damage assessment or announce a mitigation plan. 'Millions in lost transactions, stock market halts and offline commerce - that's the fallout,' a digital rights advocate argued 'But without transparency, we'll never know the true impact.'
Daily News Egypt
15-07-2025
- Business
- Daily News Egypt
Madbouly reviews progress on real estate export platform
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly chaired a meeting on Tuesday to follow up on the implementation of key recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Urban Development and Real Estate Export. In attendance were Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, Minister of Justice Adnan Al-Fangari, Minister of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Communities Sherif El-Sherbiny, along with other senior officials. At the outset, Madbouly emphasized the government's commitment to advancing the real estate export agenda, describing it as a strategic national priority. He noted that efforts are underway to simplify property acquisition procedures for foreign buyers and streamline the real estate registration process. He further highlighted the government's recent policy incentives and ongoing promotional campaigns through Egyptian embassies and consulates worldwide to attract international investment in the sector. According to Cabinet Spokesperson Mohamed Al-Homsany, the meeting reviewed the progress of the digital real estate export platform, including operational mechanisms and inter-agency coordination. The discussion also covered several technical and regulatory elements essential to the platform's launch. Al-Homsany noted that the Ministry of Communications has completed the issuance of Property ID numbers for over 18 million housing units—an important step toward digitalizing the sector. The Ministry of Justice also presented a detailed framework for the issuance of the 'Establishment and Validity Certificate' for real estate transactions involving sold units. Additionally, the meeting reviewed the eligibility criteria for real estate developers seeking to list and sell properties through the platform, as well as a range of procedures currently being finalized in coordination with relevant authorities.
Zawya
10-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Service restoration underway after Cairo telecom fire, minister tells PM
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Wednesday visited the fire-damaged Ramses Central telecommunications hub to assess the damage and review efforts to restore services disrupted across the country. The visit came after a blaze late on Monday at the central Cairo building killed four workers and injured at least 22 others, triggering a nationwide disruption of critical services and a sweeping response from authorities. During the visit, Communications Minister Amr Talaat reported that services were gradually returning to normal after being rerouted through alternative exchanges. He explained that outside the immediate vicinity of the Ramses Central building, internet and landline voice services had been restored, while mobile service quality for all four operators was back to an average of 95% of normal levels. Talaat also briefed the prime minister on sectoral services, noting that a partial outage in the banking sector had been resolved. He confirmed that the Egyptian Exchange (EGX), which suspended all trading on Tuesday as a precaution, had reopened normally on Wednesday after broker services were stabilised. The minister added that the subsidised food distribution system and emergency services had been operating largely without interruption. Madbouly stressed the need to take all necessary measures to confirm the building's structural safety and called for an urgent recovery plan to return the facility to full operation as soon as possible, pending a technical assessment. Before leaving the site, the prime minister thanked the civil defence personnel for their efforts in extinguishing the blaze. The fire prompted a swift response from Egyptian authorities on Tuesday to contain the fallout. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) temporarily doubled the daily cash withdrawal limit to 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($10,400) to facilitate transactions amid the disruption. The victims died from smoke inhalation after being trapped inside the building, authorities said. State-owned operator Telecom Egypt issued a statement mourning the loss of its employees, referring to them as 'martyrs of duty' who remained at their posts 'until the final moments to protect telecom infrastructure.'
Mada
09-07-2025
- General
- Mada
Ramses fire exposes heavy reliance of private operators on state-owned infrastructure
A fire at Egypt's most critical telecommunications facility this week has caused nationwide network service disruptions. While the government has downplayed the country's dependence on the Ramses Exchange central data center, the scale of the disruption, affecting all public and private network operators nationwide, has drawn censure from critics who point to the degree of national dependence on infrastructure concentrated in a single building complex in cental Cairo. The incident killed four people and left 32 injured while triggering an immediate and widespread internet blackout. The fire, which sent thick smoke billowing over central Cairo for hours, knocked the building out of operation. The shutdown immediately disrupted phone and internet services, emergency hotlines like those for ambulances and the police, ATMs and digital payment systems as well as some air travel operations. Communications Minister Amr Talaat, who visited the site, denied on Tuesday that Egypt relies solely on the Ramses Exchange building for telecommunication services. But the minister also said that affected services had to be redistributed across other data centers in the country, which are now acting as a backup network while repairs on Ramses are underway. No other data center in Egypt matches Ramses' in scale or in the range of functions it performs within the national telecommunications network that extends to all governorates. The exchange building serves as a data center, a storage facility leased by operators, a primary interconnection point between networks and a hub for receiving international calls. While other data centers across Egypt play significant roles within the national grid, with some coming close in terms of function, none rival Ramses. Despite Talaat's assurances, however, that the decline in service connectivity would end in hours, connectivity in Egypt dropped sharply in the aftermath of the fire, with some connectivity still unstable 48 hours later. Data from Netblocks, an independent internet monitoring platform, showed that national connectivity fell to 62 percent of ordinary levels immediately after the fire, before dropping further to just 44 percent the next day. The disruption varied across service providers. Orange was the hardest hit, with connectivity collapsing to just 2 percent of its usual levels, followed by Etisalat operating at 10 percent. Vodafone was less affected at 69 percent, while TE Data, owned by Telecom Egypt, maintained between 82 percent and 91 percent of normal connectivity. The extent of damage to each telecom company during the fire was directly linked to their level of reliance on the data center, according to Mohamed al-Maghraby, an electrical engineer specializing in network security at a private sector company who spoke to Mada Masr. Both Etisalat and Orange depend on the Ramses board for roughly 80 percent of their operations, making them the most severely affected, he said. The physical infrastructure that underpins telecom and internet services, including cable lines, exchanges, data centers and switches, is fully owned by Telecom Egypt — the network provider majority -owned by the government. The infrastructure was built and substantially upgraded by the state, especially over the past decade. Billions of Egyptian pounds were allocated to the Communications Ministry to develop the system, including a major shift from copper cables to fiber optic networks for data transmission. Government investment in the sector has reached LE152 billion over the past ten years. The government bears the full cost of infrastructure investments, while private companies, like Orange, Etisalat and others, lease transmission capacity from it, a former senior official at Telecom Egypt told Mada Masr. Although private operators are allowed to build and expand their own infrastructure according to their needs under the terms of their licenses, they opt to lease from Telecom Egypt because it's far cheaper than building their own, especially under oversight that is marred with flaws, according to the senior official. Private telecom operators entered the market before it was formally regulated, they continued. While private players began operating in the 1990s, a formal legal framework wasn't introduced until 2003, with the passage of the telecommunications regulation law, which established the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) to oversee and regulate the sector. The NTRA does not mandate that service providers build their own infrastructure, nor does it object to companies leasing the infrastructure from another provider. However, it does lay out a set of guidelines meant to ensure the quality and sustainability of services. According to the former senior Telecom Egypt official, companies are expected to lease transmission capacity that exceeds their operational needs — or greater than the number of customers they serve. Beyond this surplus, companies are also expected to maintain an emergency reserve — unused under normal conditions but available during crises of varying degrees. This reserve is meant to act as an immediate backup that ensures continued data transmission and service stability in the event of damage to primary infrastructure. The closer this reserve capacity is to the company's actual regular operating volume, the less damage the company is likely to suffer during a disruption, and the better its service continuity. Maghraby likewise said that there are two levels of contingency planning in the event of network emergencies — the first a standard backup plan, designed to fully absorb common and recurring incidents without noticeably affecting network connectivity. The second, he said, is a disaster recovery plan for rare, large-scale and unpredictable events — the worst-case scenario. In Egypt's case, this would require a full replica of the Ramses data center, mirroring its entire capacity and functionality to take over completely if the original were to fail. However, private providers tend to 'skimp' on leasing the extra or emergency capacity required as backup by the NTRA, the former senior official at Telecom Egypt said. This skimping, or that the NTRA overlooks this requirement, is a regulatory oversight. The source argues that flaws in NTRA oversight lie in a central conflict of interest: while the authority is tasked with regulating the sector on behalf of the state, the government is also an active market player through its majority stake in Telecom Egypt. This dual role makes regulatory enforcement a sensitive matter. Private companies have repeatedly accused the NTRA of favoring the state-owned company and using its supervisory powers to serve the interests of a competitor in the industry instead.
Daily News Egypt
09-07-2025
- Business
- Daily News Egypt
Service restoration underway after Cairo telecom fire, minister tells PM
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Wednesday visited the fire-damaged Ramses Central telecommunications hub to assess the damage and review efforts to restore services disrupted across the country. The visit came after a blaze late on Monday at the central Cairo building killed four workers and injured at least 22 others, triggering a nationwide disruption of critical services and a sweeping response from authorities. During the visit, Communications Minister Amr Talaat reported that services were gradually returning to normal after being rerouted through alternative exchanges. He explained that outside the immediate vicinity of the Ramses Central building, internet and landline voice services had been restored, while mobile service quality for all four operators was back to an average of 95% of normal levels. Talaat also briefed the prime minister on sectoral services, noting that a partial outage in the banking sector had been resolved. He confirmed that the Egyptian Exchange (EGX), which suspended all trading on Tuesday as a precaution, had reopened normally on Wednesday after broker services were stabilised. The minister added that the subsidised food distribution system and emergency services had been operating largely without interruption. Madbouly stressed the need to take all necessary measures to confirm the building's structural safety and called for an urgent recovery plan to return the facility to full operation as soon as possible, pending a technical assessment. Before leaving the site, the prime minister thanked the civil defence personnel for their efforts in extinguishing the blaze. The fire prompted a swift response from Egyptian authorities on Tuesday to contain the fallout. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) temporarily doubled the daily cash withdrawal limit to 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($10,400) to facilitate transactions amid the disruption. The victims died from smoke inhalation after being trapped inside the building, authorities said. State-owned operator Telecom Egypt issued a statement mourning the loss of its employees, referring to them as 'martyrs of duty' who remained at their posts 'until the final moments to protect telecom infrastructure.'
