The Impact of Internet and Telecommunications Price Increases in Egypt between 2016 and 2026
Introduction
Over the past two decades, the cost of staying connected has become a factor affecting the practical conditions for access to education, work, information, and government and digital financial services. At the same time, the Egyptian state has expanded the scope of digital services, from official educational platforms to the Digital Egypt platform, which has added services offered exclusively online since January 2026. In this context, any increase in connectivity prices cannot be treated as a purely commercial matter, because it affects a service that has become practically necessary for the exercise of other rights and freedoms.
This report is based on a documentary timeline of price increases in telecommunications and internet services in Egypt, drawing on official statements and published press reports. It does not claim to establish a final quantitative impact on every social group, as that would require field interviews and more detailed expenditure and income data. It does show, however, that pricing policies gradually moved from tax burdens and technical restructuring of packages to direct and repeated increases, shifting a growing share of the cost of connectivity to the end user. As far as publicly available information shows, these increases lacked a sufficiently detailed assessment of the effect of this shift on those who rely on smaller packages, small-denomination prepaid cards, and the cheapest connectivity options.
From the Tax Burden to the Direct Burden
It is difficult to understand what happened to telecommunications and internet prices in 2024 and 2026 if they are separated from the trajectory that preceded them. In July 2015, changes to fixed internet were presented as a restructuring of packages and speeds, not as direct price increases. These changes included canceling low-speed and unlimited plans and introducing new limited packages starting at 1 Mbps, before WE Space packages were launched in early 2020 with higher speeds and a different pricing structure.
The problem was not limited to a change in the service itself. The comparison between “before” and “after” also became more difficult because the product itself had changed in terms of speed, capacity, and use. What happened was a redefinition of what the user was buying in the first place, and of whether the user could still choose a cheaper, slower, or simpler package.
In mobile services, the trajectory was clearer. After the value-added tax was applied, a joint statement issued in September 2016 explained that an EGP 10 card would cost EGP 11, an EGP 50 card would cost EGP 55, and an EGP 100 card would cost EGP 110.
In July 2017, as the value-added tax was increased to 14%, the nominal price of the card did not rise, but the additional value in the balance declined. The more significant shift then came in September 2017, when the same card began to provide an actual balance equal to 70% of its nominal value. The tax or regulatory burden became visible not only in the sale price, but also in the actual value the user received after paying.
From a rights perspective, when a user pays a known amount but receives a use value far below what the card’s commercial name suggests, transparency itself becomes subject to scrutiny. The question is no longer only “How much did the user pay?” but also “What did the user actually receive in return?” This question is especially important in a market where millions of users rely on small recharges and short-term connectivity, not on bills or large packages.
2024 and 2025: Price Increases Become an Explicit Policy
If the previous decade saw a mixture of taxes, restructuring, and deductions from balance, January 2024 marked a clearer moment: a direct increase in fixed internet packages. The 140 GB package rose from EGP 120 to EGP 160; 200 GB from EGP 170 to EGP 225; 250 GB from EGP 210 to EGP 280; 400 GB from EGP 340 to EGP 440; 600 GB from EGP 500 to EGP 650; and 1 TB from EGP 800 to EGP 1,050, before tax, according to the wording published at the time. This increase could no longer be hidden behind a change in balance or a merely technical adjustment to the speed structure. It was an explicit price increase on a monthly subscription that, for many households, is a basic home subscription for learning, work, and services.
Another wave followed in December 2024 and early January 2025, covering fixed internet, small-denomination prepaid cards (Fakka Cards), and some mobile packages. With small-denomination prepaid cards in particular, the class sensitivity of the issue became even clearer: an EGP 10 card became EGP 13; an EGP 12.5 card became EGP 16.5; an EGP 15 card became EGP 19.5; an EGP 20 card became EGP 26; and an EGP 29 card became EGP 38.
The effect of these increases is felt sharply at the lowest and most intermittent point of use. A user who buys a small card usually does so not because this form of consumption is preferable, but because their financial capacity does not allow them to bear a higher monthly cost in a single payment. For this reason, small-denomination cards, more than other products, appear as a mirror of digital poverty rather than merely a secondary market product.
Official or commercial discourse can easily present these increases as a response to rising costs. The rights problem begins, however, when this cost is transferred to users without sufficient distinction between those who can absorb it and those for whom it may mean repeated disconnection. A uniform price does not produce a uniform effect. An increase of EGP 30, 50, or 80 on a home package, or EGP 3, 6, or 9 on a small-denomination card, may look limited in pricing tables, but it is not limited for those managing fragmented daily spending, or for those whose income itself depends on connectivity.
May 2026: Implicit Recognition of the Problem Without an Adequate Test of Protection
On May 6, 2026, Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) announced its approval of a price adjustment for some telecommunications services, ranging between 9% and 15% inclusive of taxes, while keeping unchanged the price of fixed and mobile voice minutes, top-up cards, and e-wallets. At the same time, NTRA instructed companies to make available a new fixed internet package priced at EGP 150, instead of the current lowest package at EGP 210, and a new mobile package priced at EGP 5, instead of the current lowest package, which was close to EGP 13. According to the published pricing details after the decision, new lists of fixed and mobile packages appeared across different companies.
The latest increases reveal two problems. The first is that the state, through its regulator, was not a neutral external observer but a party that approves increases, restructures the price range, and, at the same time, formulates “social exits” for them. The second is that the announcement of lower-priced packages amounts to an implicit recognition that pricing can produce digital exclusion if left without safeguards. Yet this recognition is not enough on its own. Protection is not measured solely by a package’s name and price, but also by its capacity, speed, validity period, and actual ability to enable reasonable daily use.
Here, one of the most important transparency gaps appears. While NTRA announced a fixed internet package at EGP 150 and a mobile package at EGP 5, its statement did not provide, with the same clarity, a public test proving that these packages can offset the impact of the general increases on the most affected groups. Is the capacity sufficient? Is the package suitable for educational and work uses, or only for symbolic use? Does the capacity allow users to watch lectures and attend meetings, or is it merely a regulatory cover to show a “social dimension” without real effectiveness? Price alone does not answer these questions.
The importance of this question increases because the price rise came weeks after reports of telecom companies’ requests to raise prices by 30%, a request NTRA later denied on March 17, 2026. Even if the final increase was lower, this sequence shows that the issue has become a structured field of negotiation over who bears the costs of operation, investment, inflation, exchange-rate volatility, and energy. It also raises another question: who, in the end, is being asked to bear these costs?
Affordability Is Not an Abstract Number
The claim that connectivity has become a condition for exercising other rights is no longer an exaggeration. In Egypt, the digital government services offered through the Digital Egypt platform are expanding, and the Ministry of Education continues to operate online educational platforms. NTRA itself also links its May 2026 decision to growing reliance on the internet, noting in its statement that fixed internet usage grew by 36% within one year. This increase indicates that demand for connectivity reflects growing daily reliance on it.
For years, the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) considered the affordability benchmark to be that the cost of 1 GB should not exceed 2% of monthly income. It later developed this discussion toward broader standards for fixed and mobile data through the Journey from 1 to 5 initiative. This does not mean that the benchmark is legally binding on the Egyptian state. Still, it provides an important reference point: connectivity is not measured solely by service availability, but by whether it can be used without excluding lower-income groups.
In Egypt, where the minimum wage in the public and private sectors was raised to EGP 7,000 in 2025, then to EGP 8,000 from July 2026, the initial comparison is revealing even before delving into household expenditure. When a basic fixed internet package, after the May 2026 increase, reaches around EGP 296.4, or when small-denomination prepaid cards are sold at prices that have risen successively since 2024, the burden does not fall equally on all users. A person earning the minimum wage, earning less than it in practice in the informal sector, or relying on unstable income, faces a pressure entirely different from that faced by a higher-income user who buys a larger package or uses a monthly bill.
This comparison matters even more because the minimum wage, even when raised, does not necessarily guarantee uniform protection for all workers. A gap persists between the decision and its implementation, especially in the private sector and informal labor, due to insufficient enforcement, monitoring, and complaint mechanisms to prevent evasion or non-compliance.
The problem also goes beyond the percentage of income to the nature of the items with which connectivity competes. Lower-income households do not compare the internet with another entertainment good; they may compare it with transportation, food, tutoring, medical treatment, or the phone credit needed for communication and work. For this reason, the effect of price increases appears in forms of digital austerity, such as reducing consumption, delaying recharges, relying on external Wi-Fi, giving up some educational or professional uses, or shifting to intermittent connectivity that does not allow regular participation.
Who Is Most Affected?
General talk about “users” flattens the impact of service price increases. Those most affected are those who have no alternatives. A student who needs regular connectivity for research, platform use, and completing assignments does not face the increase as a luxury that can be postponed. A freelancer, platform-based service provider, or small seller who manages customers through WhatsApp, Facebook, and digital payments treats internet connectivity as a direct business cost.
Families with children in school or people who rely on digital government services need stable home internet access, not just minimal or symbolic connectivity. Residents of remote or underserved areas, where fixed internet service is often weaker or less reliable, may also be forced to rely on mobile data, which is a more expensive service with limited capacity.
Users of small-denomination prepaid cards are the clearest group in this report, even if official data on their social characteristics is limited. This is not because they are the only group harmed, but because the product’s structure reveals something about the user’s position: small payments, short use, and direct exposure to any increase, however slight it may appear in the tables. When an EGP 10 card rises to EGP 13, or an EGP 20 card to EGP 26, the “entry price” into the service itself rises. This kind of increase is harsher for those who buy the service in small installments, again and again, because they cannot afford a larger package or a comfortable monthly subscription.
At this stage, the disproportionate effect of telecommunications and internet price increases becomes clear. Nominally uniform increases fall on a society that is already unequal in income, stable work, access to alternatives, service quality, and ability to pay in advance. Formal equality in pricing may therefore produce substantive inequality in access.
Transparency and Regulation: Where Does State Responsibility Stand?
It may be said that companies face real operating and investment costs, and that NTRA has merely responded to a pressured economic reality. This is only partly true. NTRA’s official statement in May 2026 clearly referred to rising costs of operation, labor, energy, supply chains, and electronic chips, and linked the decision to maintaining service quality and sustaining investment. But this justification, even if correct, does not remove the duty of rights-based regulation. The function of the regulator is not only to enable the market to continue, but also to regulate the distribution of its burdens and to protect users, especially when the service is directly linked to basic rights.
The paradox here is that the state is not only a regulator above the market; it is also connected to one of its largest actors. According to the frequently asked questions on Telecom Egypt’s investor relations website, the government owns 70% of the company’s shares, while its 2025 financial results and results presentation show that net profit doubled to around EGP 22.6 billion. This does not mean that every price increase is unjustified because the company is profitable, nor that costs do not exist. But it prevents the debate from being reduced to a picture of “loss-making companies versus angry users”. There are also questions about how the sector’s returns and burdens are distributed, as well as the state’s position when it serves as both legislator and regulator, and as a major shareholder.
Transparency itself also remained limited. In many previous waves of price increases, there was confusion between tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive prices, between top-up cards and small-denomination cards, and between explicit increases and technical restructuring. Even in 2026, the published decision was not accompanied by a detailed public assessment of its social impact, nor by a clear methodology explaining how it was decided that an EGP 150 package or an EGP 5 package would suffice as a protection mechanism. This absence overlooks the expected effects of the decision on different groups.
The need for transparency grows when placed alongside the reality of quality and service complaints. According to NTRA’s semi-annual report on user complaints in the second half of 2022, service quality accounted for a significant share of fixed internet complaints. NTRA imposed fines on operators and approved compensation mechanisms for fixed internet subscribers in the event of outages. In other words, the relationship between price and quality is not hypothetical. If users are being asked to pay more, then accountability for service quality and fairness during outages must be more stringent, not less.
The Right to Connectivity Is Not a Deferred Luxury
The rights argument here does not need to claim the existence of an “independent right to the internet” to be strong. The stronger legal and material approach is to view connectivity as an enabling condition for exercising rights that are already recognized: freedom of expression and access to information, education, work, equality, and access to public services. When the cost of connectivity rises in an environment where education, services, information, and economic opportunities are increasingly shifting to digital forms, the effect does not remain within the telecommunications market; it extends to the broader social field.
For this reason, the core problem is not merely that prices have risen. The problem is that Egypt’s connectivity pricing policy, through successive waves from 2016 to May 2026, has redistributed a growing share of the cost of infrastructure and the economic crisis onto end users, without the publication, within the limits of available sources, of sufficient evidence that this shift took place according to a public rights-based assessment that protects availability, affordability, and non-discrimination. As long as the state itself is pushing society toward deeper digital dependence, treating connectivity as an ordinary commodity governed only by the logic of commercial cost becomes less defensible.
Recommendations
Starting from the premise that internet connectivity has become an actual condition for exercising basic rights, foremost among them education, work, access to information, and access to public services, the paper recommends the following:
1. Explicit legal recognition of internet connectivity as an essential service, not a commercial service, and subjecting its pricing policies to the standards of availability, affordability, and non-discrimination, in a way that ensures the cost of connectivity does not become a constraint on the exercise of rights.
2. Freezing any new increases in internet and telecommunications prices until an independent and public rights-based and social assessment is conducted of the effects of previous increases, especially on low-income households, students, irregular workers, users of small-denomination prepaid cards, and residents of rural areas.
3. Approving a mandatory social tariff for fixed and mobile internet that provides sufficient connectivity for daily educational, professional, and service-related use, rather than merely symbolic packages of limited effect. This tariff should cover low-income households, students, the unemployed, pensioners, and workers in the informal economy through a simple registration mechanism that respects privacy and does not become a bureaucratic tool of exclusion.
4. Linking the acceptable minimum cost of connectivity to users’ actual income, not to companies’ costs alone, by establishing a regulatory cap that prevents the cost of a sufficient minimum amount of data from exceeding a fair percentage of the minimum wage, while taking into account workers who do not in fact receive that minimum, especially in the informal sector and irregular work.
5. Abolishing or reducing taxes and fees imposed on basic packages and small top-up cards, and financing the difference through fairer tools, such as progressive taxes on the profits of large companies or on higher consumption tiers, instead of making lower-income groups bear the cost of operating and investing in the sector.
6. Prohibiting misleading pricing practices in top-up cards and small-denomination prepaid cards, and requiring companies to clearly disclose the final price, the actual value the user receives, and the cost of the gigabyte, minute, or unit, inclusive of taxes and deductions, in a form that allows comparison between companies.
7. Halting the conversion of government and educational services into exclusively digital formats before ensuring free or affordable connectivity to access them. Every public service should retain an available non-digital channel, or the state should bear the cost of the connectivity needed to access it, so that digitization does not become a tool for excluding people with low incomes.
8. Requiring NTRA to publish a detailed methodology before approving any price increase, including cost data, profit margins, the expected impact of the increase on different social groups, the alternatives considered, and the reasons for accepting or rejecting each alternative, while opening a genuine space for public objection before the decision is approved.
9. Establishing strict rules for conflicts of interest arising from the state’s dual position as market regulator and major shareholder in Telecom Egypt, ensuring that pricing decisions are subject to independent parliamentary and judicial oversight, and publishing the data needed to prove that regulation does not serve the profitability of the state-owned actor at the expense of users.
10. Redirecting revenues from the telecommunications sector and universal service funds toward supporting connectivity for the most affected groups, rather than using them for expansions or investments that do not directly improve the ability of people with low incomes to access the internet. Financing affordable connectivity should become a permanent public obligation, not a temporary or promotional measure.
11. Supporting non-profit and community connectivity models, including cooperative local networks and free public access points in schools, libraries, youth centers, and health units, especially in villages and peripheral areas, while ensuring that these services are not tied to excessive surveillance or unnecessary collection of personal data.
12. Expanding mandatory compensation rules when service is weak or interrupted, so that users automatically receive financial compensation or additional data when quality falls below announced standards, without having to go through complex individual complaint procedures. Higher prices must be matched by a higher level of accountability, not a wider margin for impunity.
13. Launching an independent and periodic national survey on digital poverty in Egypt, measuring the regularity, capacity, quality, and cost of connectivity as a percentage of income, and its impact on education, work, and public services, rather than relying only on general indicators of the number of subscriptions or usage rates.
14. Moving from the logic of “making a cheaper package available” to the logic of “guaranteeing sufficient connectivity for all”. The existence of a low-priced package does not achieve rights-based protection if its speed, capacity, or validity period does not allow actual daily use. The standard for public policy should be people’s ability to learn, work, and access services and information through stable, affordable connectivity, not a lower-priced option on companies’ tables.
The issue is not only that the internet in Egypt has become more expensive. It is that staying connected has become more costly at the very moment when disconnection from the network has become more punitive. Between these two trajectories, it is determined in practice who remains able to access the public sphere, services, work, and knowledge, and who begins to slip out of them silently.