Mobinil Egypt: The best mobile network in Egypt

Interview with Yves Gauthier, CEO of Mobinil

Please give us a general evaluation of the telecom sector in Egypt. What are the recent developments?

The telecom sector is directly related to the country’s economy and turnover. This industry suffered quite a bit the last three years. There was a drastic decrease in the influx of tourists and this directly impacted the roaming revenue and the economy. So, the last three years were difficult. But lately things are starting to improve and we hope this will continue.

Egypt’s telecom market is certainly a young and growing industry, which makes it a very attractive destination for new investments. Do you think that there is a place for another operator? What would be some of the investment opportunities?

Another operator would disturb the market. This would definitely not be good news for mobile operators. The Minister wants to give universal license. This means that all the operators will provide the same services. It is another way of redistributing the revenue of the sector, without decreasing the total revenue of the sector. If the Universal License decrease the total revenues of the sector it will damage it, if it is a redistribution of revenues among operators it can be acceptable.

Telecom Egypt has a monopoly over the fixed lines in the country. The CEO Mohamed Elnawawy recently noted that the telecom operators work as partners rather than competitors. Do you also view the market and the internal relationship in similar terms?

We cannot say that we work as partners. We are working in the same industry. We are suffering from the monopolistic behavior of Telecom Egypt, mainly in the field of Internet. Very recently, they started replacing copper with fiber without giving us the option of retaining our customers. So, I cannot honestly say that we are fully working as partners.

It is a quote from him.

Yes, but you can also quote me on the above.

As we are competitors we cannot be quoted as partners, if he quotes that we are partners Competition Authority can take us to court. (laughs)

As part of the to reforms to the sector, the government is also creating the Telecom Infrastructure Company and plans to invite telecom operators and other entities to take stakes in the new company. Are you planning to become a stake holder? What will be the key role of this Telecom Infrastructure Company?

The key role of this infrastructure company is to be complementary or an alternative to Telecom Egypt, because today only Telecom Egypt is allowed to install fiber in Egypt. I believe it is common to have an alternative. If we are opening the market, we should also have a choice to install fiber. Fiber is necessary for broadband internet service. It is very necessary to have this company and we will be a part of this company. 

“Being more than 16 years in the market Mobinil has tried to maintain its position as the leading mobile service operator in Egypt.” Your customer base today has surpassed the threshold of 30 million customers. How did you build up your reputation? What makes you one of the leading mobile operators?

Mobinil was one of the first operators to enter the market at the same time as Vodafone. We have a long history in the mobile market in Egypt. We have tried to build our reputation on our services and our pricing. If you have competitive prices and prompt services, the customer will be happy. I hope that we will continue this way. For two years we were ranked as ‘the best mobile network in the country’. We are proud of that. We intend to continue to excel in our field by offering good network connections and offering competitive tariffs and good customer service.

Are these your main differentiation points?

Yes, for sure. The differentiation is actually based on what the customer is experiencing. You cannot differentiate on pricing for a long period. You can make a difference in terms of the quality of the service you are offering.

What is your strategy for 2015? Are you planning on launching any new services?

Yes, we will launch new services. We believe that with the penetration of the smart phone has increased, so the Egyptian applications of this will increase. We strongly believe that we should offer more services on self care so that people can use their smart phones. Recently we introduced something that will help people manage their accounts from their smart phones. We also believe in mobile money. It was recently introduced in Egypt as well. We will try to be as innovative as possible.  

Please elaborate on your commitment to Egypt in the field of corporate social responsibility field.

We are working in many different areas. We are working on employment. We have a program that trains people in finding suitable jobs. Our goal is to help 100,000 people to find jobs. We are also active in the field of education and we are assisting NGOs that are involved in helping children. Our main areas of focus are education, health and poverty.

What is your personal vision for the company?

We know that the market will move from voice to data and services. So we have to be prepared to be the best in this field. The data market has grown 140% in the past one year. We have to prepare our network for that. We also need to educate the population, because the penetration of smart phones here is 20%, where as in Europe it’s 90%. So, we have to try to promote this switch from pure voice services to data and services.

Tell us about the challenges of the industry and the infrastructure.

The challenge will be to get the infrastructure in place to support this data traffic. Today, the backbone of the mobile operator is mainly microwave, which is not fully compatible with 4G. We need to prepare the country for this growth in data. We have a population of roughly 95 million. The potential is existing. We need to put the infrastructure in place.

Is there anything in specific you would like to talk about?

I would like to reiterate the commitment of Orange. We had a difficult time these past 3 years. Orange is present in the country with Mobinil, with link and also with a service center for business customers with 2,000 people. So Orange currently employs about 9,000 people. There were some difficult times after the revolution, but Orange still believes that Egypt has a promising future.

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