Assessing the internet service providers in Egypt

Abstract

Internet is no longer a luxury or an optional service. Most of the people nowadays require some sort of internet connection to be able to carry out daily activities and work. Egypt has been investing in upgrading the internet infrastructure with major improvements to the speed and stability of the internet connections. Recently, all the major internet service providers in Egypt introduced plans with faster speeds, more traffic cap, and cheaper prices, but the throttling speeds have been sharply decreased. However, there is some sort of dissatisfaction of the service that is common among different users around. The aim of this research is to assess the performance of the four major internet service providers in Egypt. There is little research on the quality of the internet service providers in Egypt from the perspective of customers, whether residential or commercial customers. In this research, a model is proposed to find the service factors that matter the most to the customers in Egypt. A questionnaire is developed based on the proposed model. The questionnaire is first distributed on a pilot sample of diverse customers to evaluate whether it was easily understood, or not, and to ensure that appropriate answers were received. The questionnaire is then distributed among a large number of commercial and residential customers. The performance of the major Internet Service Providers is assessed and the room for improvement is identified. The paper results include analysis of the factors that contribute the most to the customer satisfaction in Egypt and the priorities of the performance from the customer perspective so that the companies should work on.