John Edgar

Egypt: Unchanged John Edgar

Publisher Marketing: He and his team are sent to Cairo in 1979 to plan the modernization of Egypt's phone service. Phone service at that point is bad. Most of the time there is no dial tone. They think their work can be accomplished in about nine months, but Willis Culpepper of USAID tells them "Schedules don't mean a thang here in Egypt." They learn that ARENTO wants technology transfer, plus system redesign, so the nine months will stretch to a year or two. Working with the Egyptians, they see the sorry state of the telephone system, first in Cairo, then in Alexandria. Underground cables failed because of water seeping into the insulation. In between they visit Cairo's Souk, Khan El Khalili, and El Alemein. He takes morning runs beside the Pyramids, sometimes enraging the rabid mongrel desert dogs. Bitten, he requires rabies injections. There are no good maps of the cities. His team consults with USAID, and gets the Air Force to do aerial photography of Cairo, and Alexandria. An accelerated course on ESS is given to six Egyptian engineers, and the planning stage is finished at last. Construction contractors are selected through a formal bidding process, and final construction of the upgrade is completed in 1983. Egypt gets the most modern telephone system at the time, but scam artists are still at work at cut-over.