## The Rights of Mobile Phone Users##

Everyone suffers from poor communication service on mobile phone networks, as mobile users have become accustomed to hearing the message (the number you have called is not available now, you can call later). This undermines users’ rights and leads to dissatisfaction with services that should be obtained and have been paid for in advance.

The dropping and continuous weakness of the communication networks stand in the way of mobile users being able to make a call at the necessary time when needed, and also cause electronic services (the system) to go down in the various institutions, bodies and agencies, which obstructs citizens’ business.

The mobile user has to go out into the street or look for a place or corner in the hope of the network signal appearing to make a call, and if he manages this, it does not mean that the call will be completed, because that depends on the network being available to the receiver, which is also often lost, and the receiver does not know the caller’s number unless he receives a message about the attempt to call him.

But the biggest problem is that the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority does not acknowledge the problem; on the contrary, the Ministry of Communications periodically announces the quality and efficiency of communications and the internet, without evaluating the performance of the digital transformation process on the ground in the various sites and institutions that provide their services to citizens.

The Ministry of Communications previously announced the completion of the first phase of laying fibre-optic cables to cover villages with mobile network services as a right of the citizen, and in 2019, on the sidelines of the Cairo International Conference on Communications and Information Technology, it announced an increase in internet efficiency with the aim of serving citizens and raising internet speed to 20 megabytes per second within two years; it also announced Egypt’s launch of its first communications satellite into orbit around the Earth, and the issuing of a tender to contract a world-class consultancy to begin implementing the second phase of the project to raise internet efficiency. Here we are not discussing these statements or announcements; rather, we are exposing the reality of mobile communications, which is getting worse day by day.

Add to this the obstinacy and refusal of the mobile companies to block the annoying and repeated advertising messages about products or other services that reach mobile users forcibly without their consent, at a time when the law punishes anyone who deliberately harasses others without their consent.

Here the question arises about the role of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, which is entrusted with protecting users’ rights as one of its main objectives set out in Law No. (10) of 2003 regulating telecommunications. What are the rules that guarantee the protection of users’ rights to the best services at the most suitable prices while ensuring the quality of those services? And what measures are taken to make users aware of their rights and duties so that they are able to choose the most suitable services and evaluate them with full transparency, and to examine complaints when there is any violation? As provided for in the law.

Do the programmes and system of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority not include analysing the complaints and reports of mobile users about the deterioration, poor quality, instability and dropping of the communication networks, and are those complaints analysed, their causes reviewed and the results announced to those who pay for the service?

We call on the Council of Ministers to take up the problem of the violation of mobile users’ rights in not receiving a good service for contacting others, and to examine the causes of the system crashing in the government institutions and bodies that provide their services to citizens during peak time every day, which obstructs citizens’ business, and to draw up proposed solutions while announcing to all the results and the period set for treating this crisis, out of the transparency to which we have become accustomed in the government’s management of crises..