Egypt's Minister of Communication and Information Technology Amr Talaat witnessed on Thursday the signing of an MoU between Telecom Egypt and leading international telecommunications company Nokia to build the first cloud infrastructure in Egypt exclusively for Internet of Things (IoT) services.

The signing came during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), a four-day event considered the largest conference and exhibition for the mobile industry, in Barcelona, Spain.

Talaat also witnessed the signing of an MoU between the two companies with the aim of cooperating in the development and testing of new uses of 5G technology.

As part of the MoU, Nokia and Telecom Egypt will also explore joint marketing initiatives and work to accelerate the development of an IoT partner ecosystem in the country.

Telecom Egypt will use Nokia's Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) as a platform to launch IoT services for the enterprise segment later this year.

Nokia WING enables operators like Telecom Egypt to offer IoT services to enterprises on a global scale. Telecom Egypt will be able to tap into the growing IoT market fast and cost-effectively due to the Nokia WING one-stop model, which includes a worldwide IoT Infrastructure-as-a-Service and pay-as-you-grow business model. WING enables Telecom Egypt to provide global IoT service at almost local prices as opposed to more expensive roaming prices.

Adel Hamed, managing director and CEO of Telecom Egypt, expressed appreciation for the collaboration with Nokia for this IoT initiative.

"We have worked with Nokia in the past and we are confident that Nokia WING will enable us to bring world-class IoT use cases to our enterprise customers in Egypt and later in the region," Hamed said.

"We are pleased to announce this collaboration with Telecom Egypt to enable next generation of IoT services for Egypt and the African market. Our cloud-native IoT proposition and pay-as-you-grow business model makes it possible for Telecom Egypt to move fast to address the vast IoT market opportunity in Egypt," said Ankur Bhan, head of WING business at Nokia.

In November 2018, acting executive president of Egypt's National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) Mostafa Abdel-Wahed predicted that 5G frequencies would be assigned to telecom operators in Egypt by the beginning of 2020.

Egypt's state-owned telephone company Telecom Egypt was the first mobile operator to obtain 4G technology in August 2016.