National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt
 | |
| Industry: | Telecommunications |
| Founded: | 2003 |
| Ownership: | Government |
| Headquarters: | Smart Village, Km 28 Egypt-Alexandria Desert Road |
| Country: | Egypt |
| Products: | Mobile and Landline Services Broadband, WiFi |
| Email: | Info[at]tra.gov.eg |
| Website: | TRA, NTRA |
| Key People | |
| Dr. Amr Badawi, Executive President Manal Ismail, Director of International Technical Coordination Dept. | |
NTRA is the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt is responsible for Egypt's Internet governance affairs,[1] and it also manages the country's IDN ccTLD. It provides telecommunication and Internet services to its users.[2] It has been governing the Internet affairs of Egypt since 2006.[3] The company is working actively to increase the number of high speed Internet users in Egypt.[4] It claims to have 9,652,171 subscribers as of September, 2011.[5] To promote the use of landlines in Egypt, NTRA banned international calls made via Skype in 2010.[6][7]
It is affiliated with ICANN, IGF, IANA, ISOC and afriNIC.[8]
NTRA is experienced with Arabic IDNs as it is the operator for مصر. (.misr), which is the IDN ccTLD for Egypt. It does not operate the traditional .eg ccTLD. They were the first organization to apply for a national IDN in Arabic.[9] They had no prior experience acting as a registry operator.[10]
Inaccessibility of .eg & مصر.[edit | edit source]
In January, 2011, the Egyptian Government, in the midst of a civil uprising, shut down the country's primary servers, which led to the inaccessibility of .eg and مصر. domains for the rest of the world. Both the Egyptian Universities Network and NTRA, operators for .eg and مصر. respectively, requested their secondary DNS servers outside Egypt, to maintain the web pages on the basis of last received data. ICANN considered this a serious issue, and one which could also occur as a consequence of a natural disaster. Therefore, to maintain a stable internet environment throughout the world, ICANN has proposed that the ccNSO make a policy for handling such situations.[11]
Events[edit | edit source]
NTRA hosted ICANN 33 in Cairo in November, 2008, and an ICANN regional meeting in April, 2008.[12][13] It organized an IDN workshop in 2006.[14] In 2009, it organized an IPv6 transition workshop for the IGF in conjunction with ICANN and AfriNIC.[15] The company arranges ICT related seminars, conferences and meetings throughout the year. A complete list of International events by NTRA can be found here.
External Links[edit | edit source]
- NTRA subscribers list.