The National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) is studying mechanisms to provide frequencies for the mobile service operators as a prelude to proposing the 4G services license next year, NTRA Director for Telecom Services and Planning Christine Arida said.

Arida told Daily News Egypt Tuesday that over the past period, NTRA committed to working on improving mobile companies’ performance by following up on the level of service quality. This is in order to guarantee the companies’ ability to offer 4G technology.

She said NTRA is currently in discussions with security authorities regarding providing frequencies for mobile operators to offer 4G services. Arida’s statements came on the sidelines of the conference held by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to launch Measuring the Information Society (MIS) Report-2015.

According to Arida, switching television broadcasting from analog to digital is not the only solution to enable additional frequencies for mobile operators. NTRA is studying new technologies to that end and expects that the 4G services will not be proposed before the first half of 2016.

The MIS report conducted by ITU put Egypt in tenth place among Arab countries in terms of range of information technology services.

Meanwhile, Egypt came in last place among Arab countries in terms of prices offered for fixed internet services as a percentage of the national income per capita, whereby the cost of the fixed internet packages with 5GB download capacity amounted to 15% of the national income per capita. The list was topped by Kuwait followed by Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Tunisia, the UAE, Libya, Lebanon, and Sudan respectively.

Egypt topped the list of the Arab countries with the lowest USB-internet service costs; the report estimated the service’s cost at $14.1 monthly.