Four telecom workers were killed, and 27 others injured after a massive fire broke out at the Ramses Central exchange building in central Cairo on Monday evening, raising questions about the country’s aging digital infrastructure.
The blaze, which erupted around 6 pm in a seventh-floor equipment room of the 10-story building, burned for several hours, damaging core cables and servers.
The incident prompted widespread disruptions in telecommunications, online banking, and e-payment services in multiple governorates as the building houses a crucial telecom data center and serves as a central exchange for communications.
As a result, the Egyptian Exchange suspended trading this morning “to ensure equal opportunity for all market participants,” according to a press release reviewed by Al Manassa.
Ahmed El-Sheikh, chair of the Egyptian Exchange, told Al Manassa that the board took the decision as “internet outages in some areas prevent certain traders from executing buy or sell operations, which undermines market fairness.”
Meanwhile, civil protection teams were still cooling down the site early this morning, as investigators examined evidence to determine the fire’s cause. A security source, speaking to Sky News Arabia, said the likely cause was an electrical short circuit.
Forensic teams are still collecting data.
In a statement posted on Facebook Tuesday morning, the WE Trade Union Committee mourned the loss of Mohamed Talaat, Ahmed Ragab, Ahmed El-Dars and Wael Marzouk.
Following the nationwide shutdown, MP Reham Abdel Nabi of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party submitted an urgent inquiry to the Communications Minister Amr Talaat.
In a statement, Abdel Nabi described the outage as a “near-total paralysis” of a vital sector, and said the fire disrupted cables used by emergency services including police, fire, and ambulance dispatch.
“This poses a direct threat to citizens’ ability to seek help in life-threatening situations,” she said, demanding immediate government action to restore services and investigate possible negligence in maintenance or civil protection procedures.
“What happened is a serious warning about the fragility of Egypt’s digital infrastructure,” Abdel Nabi added, calling for a comprehensive review of technical safety protocols in telecom centers and full transparency in the findings of the investigation.
MP Freddy Elbaiady also criticized the incident, asserting that the fire “cannot be seen as a mere incident but rather a digital disaster that poses a direct threat to national security,” adding that “it blatantly exposes the absence of preventive standards, the lack of emergency planning, and an excessive dependence on centralized telecom operations.”
On its end, the National Telecom Regulatory Authority announced that some connectivity circuits were knocked offline but that traffic was rerouted to a backup exchange in Rawda telecom building.
It added that mobile operators were coordinating with the authority to re-establish fixed-line and broadband services.
“Full service coverage is expected within 24 hours,” the statement said. It added that emergency teams were cataloging the extent of service disruption, including impacts on landline, broadband, and digital payment platforms such as InstaPay and Fawry. Compensation for affected customers is also expected.
Communications Minister Talaat visited the site at dawn Tuesday and told reporters that all services would return gradually within 24 hours.
He denied that the Ramses exchange was a single point of failure.
“Egypt is not dependent on just one telecom exchange,” he said. “Ramses will remain offline for several days, but services have already been transferred to multiple other sites.”
Firefighting operations forced the closure of Ramses Street and the 6th of October Bridge in the direction of Nasr City, causing severe traffic congestion that lasted into Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, flight schedules at Cairo International Airport were temporarily disrupted due to communication and internet network failures delaying several departures before operations resumed late Monday night.
