Country snapshot : Egypt
 

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When I first started researching the internet characteristics of Egypt at the excellent resource site www.internetworldstats.com, I automatically went to the section headed ?Middle East? expecting to find it listed there, but I could not find it. Instead, it was listed under Africa. You live, you learn...

Egypt has roughly the same population as Germany, at just over 81 million people, of which about 10% have access to the internet at this time.

Of all the world?s countries, we used to enjoy the highest Alexa ranking in Egypt, due largely to the fact that credit card penetration remains negligible there, at approximately 3% of the population.

However, upon after having just rechecked our status, it would appear that Czech Republic (278), Slovakia (535) and Thailand (1,135) have overtaken Egypt (2,521) in said rankings at this time.

As with most of the countries in this region, cash remains a popular method of payment and the use of credit cards and other forms of electronic payment is limited.

Clearly, since cash is wholly unsuitable for paying for services over the web, the telephone is the next best thing, with Egypt enjoying coverage rates of well above 90%.

Cellphone technology has enabled countries such as Egypt to bypass the messy infrastructure and expensive start-up costs of setting up fixed-line systems. As a result, wireless technology is reaching isolated rural areas where fixed lines were never able to penetrate.

Thanks to our new voice dialer, surfers from there are now in a position to pay you on a per-minute basis. This should be deployed in tandem with our PbP ?classic? product, so that you can continue to make money from those surfers that still use dial-up to access the internet and do not have the luxury of broadband or a second phone line.

Another point worth noting is that gay traffic seems to convert particularly well from there. We attribute this to the fact that homosexuality cannot be freely expressed there, so gays have little choice other than to go online to satiate their carnal desires.

Finally, when pitching Egyptians, remember to communicate with them in their own native language of Arabic. Your phone processor should be able to provide you with all the tools necessary to do this ? if not, you should consider changing to one that does.:pimp

great thread, thanks for the info :thumbsup

it is a beautiful country

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very informative. thank you!

I want to see the pyramids!

Great thing... one thing I'd like to add is that although Arabic is a widely distributed language with many dialects, the Egyptian dialect is the most well known throughout the Arab countries, with most of the films and TV shows produced there being popular throughout the Arab world. So while someone from Morocco and someone from Lebanon speak vastly different Arabic, they'll both understand the Egyptian dialect fairly well. This comes into play when you want to translate your web site to Arabic - make sure you get it done by an Egyptian.

I went there on a vacation several years ago. There are a lot of people who speak at least some English and you are right, cash does rule. There are still many areas of the country that are very poor and very backwards as far as technical development goes, but places like Cairo are growing and modernizing quickly.

Their main source of income is still tourism and one thing I found interesting is that anyone that wants to can go to college for free as long as you have good enough grades to get into the school.

I recommend it to everyone. It is an awe inspiring place and while it may sound cliche it can be a life changing experience.

My sister is living in Cairo right now...Says the drivers are crazy!

yeah, just on my trip from the airport to the hotel I thought I was going to die five times. Imagine a city the size of Los Angeles without any street lights and very little traffic control.