Starting January 1996, IDSC/RITSEC initiated the provision of Internet to private service providers under the .com.eg domain. Other providers were connected through through their own international gateways.

Egypt currently has the basic foundation for starting a strong commercial Internet community. There is limited but sufficient infrastructure development. There is also a positive policy to liberalize the country's value added services.

The government represented by IDSC/RITSEC and Egypt Telecom started an initiative for the development of an internet backbone and gateway facility with reasonable prices to be used by the private sector ISP.

Egypt now has over 40 operational ISPs in Cairo, Alexandria, Sinai and the Red Sea area, providing their Internet services for commercial enterprises and individual users.

The government will further support the academic and government sector with its services. The catalytic role of the government will continue to support newly established ISPs to establish a strong industry for value added information services in the country, tourism, culture, health and electronic commerce will be promoted as a base for socio-economic development.

The Internet community in Egypt today consists of around 20,000 users who are almost equally distributed in three major sectors, academic, government, as well as the commercial sector.