The National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt is the operator of the مصر TLD. The TLDs مصر and .eg are operated by different organisations. The .eg domain has fairly low registration figures, and therefore limited visibility in the local market. Plans to raise awareness of the مصر domain through marketing campaigns have been put on hold due to political circumstances affecting Egypt. NTRA started registering IDNs in 2010. The IDN, xn–wgbh1c (مصر ),was delegated in April 2010 – among the first four ccTLD IDNs to be approved and delegated through ICANN’s IDN Fast Track process.
44% of Egyptians are online. There are more than 12 million Facebook users, and use of social networks was cited as one of the causes of the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt. There is a vigorous Arabic online content, with Egypt as one of the top contributors. Mobile and fixed line broadband penetration are relatively healthy for the region.
Despite these promising factors, domain name registrations (both in ASCII and IDNs) exhibit the same low uptake seen across the Arab States. The aftermath of the Arab Spring in Egypt have meant that a scheduled land-rush phase for مصر was delayed until January of 2013.
The initial landrush was relatively successful. More than 3 000 domains were registered under the land rush strategy. However, a year later (February 2014), there were 3255 domains registered under مصر ,a net growth of around 200 (8%) in the previous 12 months.