The blaze that engulfed the Ramses Central Exchange in Downtown Cairo on 7 July caused a partial disruption of telecommunication services, not a total collapse of the system, contrary to initial fears at the time of the incident.
The fire claimed the lives of four employees of state-owned Telecom Egypt, which operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The state had contingency plans to distribute the load among the national telecommunications network, said Amr Talaat, the communications minister, before parliament.
“The Ramses Central is a key pillar in a system of numerous interconnected exchanges, forming a complex network built over many years. It serves 120 million mobile subscribers and between 15 to 20 million fixed-Internet households,” Talaat said.
“The continuation of service following the Ramses Central fire proves the system’s resilience. If the Ramses Central had completely collapsed, these discussions would not be taking place online. Yet they are, because the system remains operational and has even improved in efficiency, handling traffic levels above normal capacity.”
According to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority, “fixed Internet and mobile services (voice and data) were relatively affected across all three mobile operators due to the disruption of some connection circuits caused by the fire. Technical teams from Telecom Egypt and the mobile companies are coordinating efforts to restore the affected circuits and reroute services through other Telecom Egypt exchanges.”
The fire started on the floor designated for hosting telecom operators, which includes separate spaces for each of the three mobile operators, before spreading to other floors, said Mohamed Nasr, chairman of Telecom Egypt, explaining the cause of the disruption in connections between the three mobile networks.
The incident revealed the depth of Egypt’s expansion in digital transformation and financial inclusion, said Mohamed Kholaif, a digital transformation consultant and member of the Communications and Information Technology Research Council at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology.
Today, telecommunications infrastructure and data centres are central to nearly every aspect of life, and any disruption to the telecom sector inevitably affects all other sectors.
While Telecom Egypt is being criticised for relying heavily on the Ramses Exchange as a primary hub for telecom operations, Kholaif pointed out that the other mobile operators had made the same mistake.
Had the fire occurred at the Ramses Central 20 years ago, it would have attracted little attention, but the site today serves as a critical hub, housing modern equipment that connects mobile networks to one another and to landlines. It also manages the fibre optic cables essential for service hotlines and the transmission of voice and data communications, Kholaif noted.
The fire led to a suspension of e-payment services, including mobile wallet services operated by the three mobile network providers, as well as instant payment services managed by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) via the InstaPay app.
The disruption in telecommunication networks also impacted the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX). On the night of the fire, the EGX informed traders at brokerage firms that they could attend the following day’s trading session at its headquarters in the Smart Village. However, a nationwide drop in Internet capacity prompted the EGX to cancel the 8 July trading session.
The announcement spread on Thndr, the most widely used trading app in Egypt, with the app remaining operational despite the drop in Internet capacity.
A few hours before the EGX announcement, the CBE reported a partial disruption to digital financial services and that some ATMs — particularly those in malls and outside bank branches — were out of service.
The CBE expected heavy foot traffic at bank branches on 8 July and decided to temporarily increase the maximum in-branch cash withdrawal limit from LE250,000 to LE500,000. Additionally, it extended operating hours at certain branches, leaving it to each bank to determine which locations would implement this change.
The partial disruption in services resulted in damage and financial losses for customers and businesses. On 8 July, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli visited the Ramses Central and announced that the entire building would be temporarily taken out of service, with network management transferred to other exchanges, including the Rawda Central in the Manial district of Giza.
Four days after the incident, the three mobile network operators began sending apology messages to clients, providing free Internet gigabytes as compensation.
For e-payment service providers, an incident like the fire at the Ramses Central qualifies as an operational risk, said banking expert Mohamed Abdel-Aal, a former board member of the Arab Bank and the Suez Canal Bank. Losses in unexpected events such as the fire may continue to surface over the long term for telecom companies, the banking sector, and the users of telecom and financial services, he added.
Telecom companies lose revenue from the calls and Internet use that would have been made during the outage and could be obligated to offer compensation depending on the terms of their contracts. The immediate losses include the costs of relocating operations to alternative sites and activating substitute equipment and systems. Once services stabilise, the process of assessing long-term losses begins, Abdel-Aal stated.
In the EGX domain, brokerage firms may have incurred implicit losses equal to the value of commission on daily transactions that could not be executed on the day services were disrupted, he added.
However, the banks typically have fallback mechanisms, primarily by expanding the use of cash temporarily until digital services are restored, he said, referring to the CBE’s decision to raise the maximum cash withdrawal limit.
“While this situation does not constitute a direct financial loss for the banks, it does increase the burden on the cash system, placing additional pressure on branch employees and prolonging the time customers spend obtaining services. This is not considered a financial loss per se, but rather a strain on the monetary system due to the temporary increase in cash-based transactions.”
Abdel-Aal noted that the most difficult losses to quantify are the value of transfers between people and transactions between people and the banks. Disruption in communications with foreign banks and international transfer delays could result in long-term losses, as international banks might then be entitled to claim compensation for failed transfers. This, however, was not the case in the current incident, he added.
The challenges facing Egypt’s telecom sector are similar to those confronting major service providers in the European Union, said telecommunications and digital transformation expert Loaii Hashem Zoheir.
The challenges include a deeply rooted institutional culture, large workforce numbers, slow decision-making processes, overlapping authorities among decision-makers, and the accumulation of multiple network layers with different technologies. These older infrastructures are often interwoven with newer networks operating on different systems tailored to the needs of each network and the specific cables used in their operation.
The Operational staff of Telecom Egypt are credited with preventing the total collapse of the system and for gradually restoring operations while minimising the loss in Internet capacity, Zoheir said, stressing that when comparing Egypt’s telecommunications sector to those in other countries, such comparisons should be made with nations that share similar conditions, whether in terms of population, size, or operational conditions. In this case, Zoheir said, Telecom Egypt’s crisis containment had managed the situation as quickly as possible and to the best of their abilities.
A key question emerging from the crisis is what plans are needed to prevent a recurrence. Given that such crises are bound to happen, how can the sector reduce the likelihood of similar events and develop strategies for a faster response and lower losses in the future?
Telecom Egypt, the only telecommunications company listed on the EGX, issued a disclosure on the first day of trading following the fire stating that “all assets affected by the Ramses Central Exchange fire, including buildings and equipment, are fully insured. The fire was fully contained, and the company’s technical teams succeeded in gradually restoring most services in the affected areas.”
“The fire had a partial impact on some fixed-line and mobile Internet services. Telecom Egypt is currently assessing the full extent of the damage. The company asserts its commitment to transparency and to providing timely updates on developments related to the incident, while ensuring business continuity and uninterrupted service across the country.”
Despite the incident, Telecom Egypt’s stock performance remained unaffected. On 9 July, the first trading day following the fire, the company’s share price rose by 0.7 per cent, reaching LE39.53 and peaking at LE39.7. Trading volume reached 202,600 shares across 493 transactions, with a total trading value of LE7.9 million.
The company recorded net profits of LE4.65 billion during the first quarter of 2025. Consolidated revenues during the same period rose to LE24.79 billion.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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