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India signs MoU with Egypt for ICT cooperation

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CIOL Bureau
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CHENNAI: India and Egypt today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) implementation in health and educational sectors.

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Talking to the media after signing the bilateral agreement with his Indian counterpart, Egyptian minister for communications and IT, Dr Tarek Kamel said the agreement was aimed at strengthening relations between the two countries, which was started in the 1960s.

“ICT has changed the world and has made every country global. The agreement is also aimed at leveraging globalization for the benefit of the Egyptian people, as ICT plays an excellent and terrific role. This agreement will integrate both the countries and their economies too,” he said.

Dr Tarek said that the main aspects were of the Arabic Gateway, as Egypt would act as an entry point for Indian companies to establish their base in the Arabic and Euro-Mediterranean world. “The agreement will see the two countries sharing their experiences and share them in the areas of health and education apart from human resources development,” he said further.

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The two countries have also agreed to abide by the Universal Service Obligations and Egypt is keen to invite Indian software companies and telecom operators to do business in their country.

As for the IT industry, the Egyptian team has signed an agreement with NIIT for content sourcing and training.

A Nasscom team is scheduled to visit that country next month.

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Union Minister for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran said that the two countries would work more strategically in the educational sector, establishing R&D labs apart from utilizing the market potential.

“Indian Government is aiming at 100 million phone subscribers by 2008 and 20 billion broadband connections by 2010,” Maran said adding that the government would also move from IPV 4 to IPV 6 generation in the meantime.

“BSNL and MTNL are doing a Detailed Project Report (DPR) to lay a under-sea cable, connecting Egypt and India, which would be part of the Asia-America gateway. The report will study the feasibility of laying the cable from Mumbai, Cochin, Chennai or Kolkatta. This would be the first ever private initiative in the telecom sector, and the cable laying work would start in end-2007,” he informed.

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Stating that a Joint Working Group would be formed between the two countries, Maran said that the ministerial level meetings would be held every alternate year though the groups would be meeting every alternate month to review the progress of the agreement.

The Egyptian delegation, consisting representatives from both the Government and the private sector would be visiting Bangalore and Hyderabad, in the coming days.

The team would visit the Sriperumbudur Hub, which consists of telecom majors Nokia, Motorola and Flextronics.

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