By Mohammad Baali
Albawaba.com – Cairo
Microsoft and the Egyptian firm Linkdotnet on Monday signed an agreement to cooperate in launching the Arabic version of msn.com.
The signing ceremony in Cairo was attended by Egypt’s Minister of Telecommunications Ahmad Nazif, who hailed the partnership, voicing optimism that Egypt would become the regional telecoms hub.
For his part, MSN vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Emery Perkin, said that the partnership with Link started four years ago, and that it had taken the pair two years to prepare for the project, which was announced in Dubai in 1999.
According to Ali Faramawi, head of MSN in Egypt, the only way to attract Arab internet users is by providing them with Arabic content, and upgrading e-government services on the web.
The Arabic language version of MSN will not be a mere translation of the English content on msn.com, said Khalid Bishara, CEO of Linkdotnet.
The agreement was signed on behalf of Microsoft by Perkin, and by Najeeb Sawrees, CEO of Orascom Telecom, the parent company of Linkdotnet, which controls 40 percent of the internet services market in Egypt.
