Almost One Million Egyptians Have Broadband Internet Access

In a new survey of connectivity among Egyptian urban households, titled ‘Egypt Households Telecoms and Media Survey Report 2008‘, in which the Arab Advisors Group sampled 700 households in urban areas of the country, the results show almost a million Egyptian households have access to broadband connections.

According to official figures from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt had 427,085 ADSL lines by the end of 2007. The Arab Advisors Group estimates that 75% of those are residential ADSL lines, and based on the survey results, 63.4% of Egyptian households share the connection with their neighbours, around 3 other households to be precise, which puts the estimate for households with ADSL connections in Egypt at 956,000 households by end of 2007.

The survey also showed that 81.2% of Egyptian Internet users preferred to browse Arabic language websites, and that Internet cafes remain an important connection point for many Egyptians, with 27.8% responding that they used Internet café services.

E-commerce and online transaction penetration remains very limited though with only 1.3% of respondents saying they have bought products or services or paid bills online.

# Source: ITP

Filaty, Arab File And Photo Sharing Service

Filaty (which means ‘My files’ in Arabic) is an online service that gives users the possibility to upload files and photos quickly for online storage and sharing. The service, which was launched by Egyptian Muhammad Abdul-Shakour Arab (Division Designs), and developed with Syrian Ali Jabr (Reverya Web Solutions), is still in public beta.

The service is completely free for everyone, in fact you don’t even need to create an account, you can start uploading right away. It allows unlimited uploads, files of up to 100MB each, photos of up to 15MB each, and to make things even easier, up to 15 concurrent photo uploads.

The main target of this service are bloggers and forum dwellers who need a quick place to upload the photos and files they want to post and share with others, but of course it is not limited to them only.

The interface is only in Arabic for the time being; it is very easy and straight-forward, with a simplistic and clean design.

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