Want a building permit? You’ll need to hook your property up to fiber. Fiber optic connectivity will be one of the public utilities required for new construction permits as of April — and will be treated like all other required utilities, CIT Minister Amr Talaat said in his policy address to the House of Representatives yesterday, according to Al Mal. The minister did not explicitly say whether this requirement will be included in the new building code, and the Unified Building Code (pdf) passed last year only lists drinking water and sanitation infrastructure, electricity, and a road network as the “basic public utilities” required for a building. However, the new building code is expected to be expansive and should see the light in the near future, suggesting that CIT infrastructure requirements could be included in the new regulations.

The inclusion would also make sense as the Sisi administration pushes ahead with its digitization strategy, which includes work from the CIT Ministry to upgrade and develop Egypt’s network infrastructure, Talaat told Enterprise back in 2018. Vodafone Egypt and state-owned Telecom Egypt have previously announced plans to invest in fiber optic infrastructure.