Egypt Daily News – In a press conference held on Wednesday, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dr. Amr Talaat, addressed the recent fire at the Ramses Central Telecommunications Office, explaining why the blaze spread more rapidly than usual.
According to Dr. Talaat, the fire originated in a room on the seventh floor of the building. He noted that the structure’s internal design significantly contributed to the swift spread of the flames. “The entire building is interlaced with conduits that carry both data and electrical cables,” he said. “These pipes essentially acted as channels, allowing the fire to travel quickly from one room and hall to another.”
Employees initially attempted to extinguish the fire using the building’s internal firefighting systems, but the flames quickly escalated, spreading across multiple floors. Firefighters were eventually called in and worked for over 12 hours to bring the situation under control.
The minister confirmed that the incident had impacted a range of services, including voice communication, data transfer, digital financial transactions, and digital documentation. However, he emphasized that these services were disrupted but not completely halted.
Dr. Talaat explained that the Ramses Central Office is a critical node in Egypt’s national telecommunications infrastructure, though it is not the sole facility supporting these services. “The network includes several other central offices, many of which are comparable to or larger than Ramses,” he said, stressing that the redundancy in the system helped mitigate the impact.
In the initial stages of the fire, officials had hoped to contain the situation and resume operations at the affected site. Preparations were underway to implement a contingency plan—Plan B—which involved redistributing some of the service load to other central offices in the network.
However, as it became evident that the fire would take longer to contain and that the building would not return to operational status in the near future, authorities activated a more extensive emergency plan—Plan C. This strategy involved removing Ramses Central entirely from the national communications network and shifting all service loads to other facilities.
The Ministry continues to monitor the situation and is working to ensure that services across the country return to full capacity as soon as possible.
