Sleight of hand: CIT Minister Yasser El Kady said the Ministry is considering having Telecom Egypt (TE) transfer its 45% stake in Vodafone Egypt to its subsidiary TE Holding to “end the ‘crisis’ of conflict of interest,” according to Al Mal. TE Holding was created in 2009 and is 99.9% owned by TE. El Kady says corporate governance rules apply, so there’s no problem of having TE own a stake of Vodafone as long as it does not have representatives on its board of directors. Uhm… sure. TE CEO Tamer Gadalla took it a step further and said there is no legal requirement for TE to divest from its Vodafone stake, despite both companies being in direct competition now in providing 4G mobile communications. The National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority says its main concern is how the stake affects commercial relations between TE and Vodafone Egypt, but so far it has seen no indication of trouble.

Are we back to this 5G business again? El Kady reportedly promised that Egypt will be among the first to get 5G services launched in the region, Al Mal reports. Yes, maybe when we finally get our space program up and running, master interdimensional travel, all while running on TE Data’s 0.5 MB connection.