Egypt's trio of mobile operators is taking its battle for consumer loyalty into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, offering rate reductions for pilgrims and charity initiatives aimed to benefit the poor in Egypt. The moves reflect increasingly fierce competition between Mobinil, Vodafone, Egypt and Etisalat Egypt , which have all slashed rates to woo new users in a market analysts say may approach saturation within six years. Mobinil and Etisalat Egypt, a unit of UAE-based Etisalat, have cut their roaming fees to 50 piastres ($0.09) per minute for customers to receive calls from Egypt while performing the umrah pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan. Vodafone Egypt, a subsidiary of global operator Vodafone, is offering six free roaming minutes in any ten days of Ramadan for Egyptians in Saudi Arabia for a one-off cost of 3 pounds. ‘They are getting very aggressive in term of offers, even more than last year when emphasis was more on the on-net tariffs,' said Nadine Ghobrial, a telecom analyst at EFG-Hermes. On-net refers to calls between phones on the same network. “Operators have only one way to go in terms of tariffs, which is down,” Ghobrial added. Each of the Egyptian firms have reached roaming agreements with a different Saudi operator. Mobinil customers will use the Zain network, Etisalat's offer is on Mobily and Vodafone's is via Saudi Telecom Co. (STC). Egypt's mobile penetration has been growing steadily with more than a million new mobile subscribers added in each of the last nine months, taking the total above 48 million in a country with a population of 77 million.
