Egypt's National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) Executive President Dr. Amr Badawy led the Egyptian delegation to sixth annual Arab Regulators Network (AREGNET) meeting, held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from 19 to 20 May, 2009.

The meeting was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in which 17 heads of telecommunication regulatory authorities (TRA)s participated in the meeting. The presidency of AREGNET was transferred from the National Telecommunications Authority in Tunis to the National Regulatory Authority in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

AREGNET assigned NTRA to lead a taskforce to study broadband internet and figure out how to spread it on wider scale among the Arab citizens.

The teamwork will look into the Wi-Fi, Wi-Max and UMTS technologies, their frequency spectrum and the means to set prices for such services.
The TRAs of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Emirates, Jordan, Tunisia, Bahrain, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan and Libya joined the taskforce.

During the meetings, discussions tackled the issue of developing frameworks on the establishment and administration of Arab regulatory authorities for Arab countries that are still in their early stages of developing regulators.

The meeting also discussed the issue of number portability and the successful experiences in the Arab region in this area, highlighting the challenges and advantages of the application of this system. Moreover, the issue of Arab domain names was discussed in the meeting, which allows non-English-speaking Arab users to benefit from the Internet and use it in their daily lives.

Separately, AREGNET formed a taskforce for preparing the Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) due to be held in the Lebanese capital Beirut in November, 2009.


About NTRA
The National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) acts as an independent and prudent arbiter among the different ICT sector stakeholders: the industry, the state and consumers. Founded in 2003 according to the Telecommunications Regulation law as a national authority to administer the telecommunication sector, the scope of its work, as a general outline, covers issues related to transparency, open competition, universal service and the protection of user rights.