Catalin Buliga: Vodafone Egypt is a living laboratory of Egyptian led innovation — the infrastructure for future cities and 5G services are our top priorities

Catalin Buliga, Technology Director of Vodafone Egypt, brings with him nearly four decades of experience in telecommunications and a career shaped across Europe before embarking on his first professional journey outside the continent. In this exclusive interview, he outlines how Egypt’s unique dynamics—rapid population growth of nearly two million people annually, a youthful demographic where 60% are under 35, and the rise of new cities and mega-projects—are redefining the telecom industry.

For Buliga, the numbers tell the story: Vodafone Egypt serves more than 53 million customers, yet around 7.5 million Egyptians remain without mobile coverage. This dual challenge—extending networks to underserved rural areas while building infrastructure for Egypt’s new urban centers—positions the country as a living laboratory for connectivity and innovation.

From the strategic timing of 5G rollout to pioneering solar-powered solutions that cut costs and installation time, Buliga highlights how Egypt is not just catching up with global trends but setting new benchmarks. Leading a team of over 2,000 Egyptian experts who have secured more than 40 international patents, he describes Egypt as a market of extraordinary growth, talent, and opportunity—one that feels like rewinding Europe’s telecom industry by 20 years, but with the advantage of learning from its lessons.

Having spent several years in Europe prior to your move to Egypt, could you walk us through the key milestones of your professional journey?

I have been in the telecommunications industry for almost 37 years. I never worked outside this sector—even during university, I was already employed by the incumbent operator in Romania. I balanced eight hours of work with six hours of study for nine years. My career began in fixed networks, and later, in 1998, I moved into the mobile world. Personally, I am 56 years old, and this is my first professional experience outside Europe.

In Europe, when you work for a multinational, you have to be ready, especially on the management side, to move to other countries or to be in charge of other countries. Sometimes it’s not necessary to move. Before coming to Egypt, I was still responsible for Romania, but at the same time, I was the head of network development for fixed and mobile networks for eight countries in Europe—a cluster of companies across the region.

It seems like an exceptionally challenging task to oversee them all effectively!

If you have good teams, it’s not difficult. In the end, when you are a leader, you don’t need to do it yourself. It’s all about the team. It’s all about the people. But I have to say that Egypt is different. I never thought there was so much difference between Africa and Europe, and Egypt, specifically within Africa, is really different. After working so many years in Europe, I can say—and I actually say it every time I meet people—that yes, Egypt is different.

In your view, why does Egypt differ so markedly?

Egypt is experiencing remarkable growth, and this has profound implications for our industry. The country’s population increases by nearly two million people each year, and its demographic profile is strikingly young: 52% are under the age of 24, while around 60% are below 35. This generation has grown up with smartphones, which fundamentally shapes their expectations. Unlike in Europe, the demand for digital solutions is not just a preference—it is a necessity. Young consumers are accustomed to mobile-first experiences; they do not want to wait in queues or rely on traditional retail models. For operators and the industry as a whole, this means digital transformation is no longer optional. It is a mandate driven by the very nature of the market and the expectations of its clients.

The second dimension of Egypt’s growth is geographical. Since my arrival, the country has witnessed the rise of new cities and mega infrastructure projects—such as New Alamein, the New Administrative Capital, and new airports. For our industry, this represents a continuous greenfield opportunity. Each expansion requires us to establish connectivity, deploy sites, build fixed networks, and accelerate digital adoption.

Every year, the scale of demand increases. When I first assessed the market, I estimated a certain number of sites would be sufficient to cover Egypt. Yet annually, that figure grows—by roughly 2,000 additional sites each time we remap—because the landscape keeps expanding. At present, our calculations show that around 7.5 million Egyptians still lack mobile coverage from any operator. This highlights the dual challenge: extending networks to underserved rural areas of the ‘old’ Egypt, while simultaneously building infrastructure for the ‘new’ Egypt with its emerging cities.

Consider the Grand Egyptian Museum, the pyramids, the new Sphinx airport, and the hotels rising to support commerce and tourism. Each represents fresh territory requiring fiber, sites, and connectivity. For us, Egypt is growing from all angles—population and geography. It feels like stepping back 20 years, when the industry was still laying down the very first signals. Before we can advance to 5G, IoT, and beyond, we must first ensure universal coverage. That is the fundamental difference compared to Europe.

How do you compare your experience in Europe with Egypt?

Europe is very mature already when it comes to networks, customer experience… They have already finalized covering the countries, and then they rushed into the adoption of new technologies: 5G, IoT, and so on. In Europe today, the connectivity is already done. The whole continent is focused on new things: IoT, 5G standalone, and all the new technologies enabling new use cases on top of connectivity. Let me give you a number from benchmarks. Umlaut, a respected German company, measures customer experience. European networks score around 950 points out of 1,000—close to perfection. They have been improving on the same territory and population for years.

While African networks, including here, are in the range of 700 points. We are still in the organic growth phase, rolling out networks, adding capacity to bring that level of quality. That’s why I always say that Egypt and Africa, in general, are like Europe 10 years ago. Ten years ago in Europe, we were still building sites for coverage, adding capacity, adding redundancy for resilience. I remember when we were saying we needed triple fiber for every site because you couldn’t afford a fiber cut. Here, we are at double; Europe moved to triple. So, the industry in Europe is more mature. It’s just timing; they moved faster in investments and adoption of new technology. Here, we are still building the basics—coverage for the first time. They are more advanced in new technologies, varied services, 5G-enabled use cases.

How does financial inclusion differ between Europe and Egypt?

Egypt and Africa have something different. In Europe, the population is banked. In Africa, in Egypt, the population is largely unbanked. If I remember the number, around 82% of the Egyptian population is unbanked—they don’t have a bank account. This is why financial services like Vodafone Cash are so popular. People need to move money in an easy way. That’s why such services are not as successful in Europe; everybody has a bank account. This demographic difference triggers different needs and accelerations here that were not present in Europe.

What lessons has Egypt learned from Europe’s approach to 5G?

When I say Egypt is different, Egypt also learned from Europe’s mistakes. For example, in Europe, we launched 5G early. I launched 5G in my home country in May 2019, the second in Europe commercially. The number of 5G-ready terminals was so low that we had very nice, empty networks requiring a lot of investment. The equipment is more expensive, spectrum is dedicated, and electricity consumption jumps. We took the burden of fast investment and increased energy costs for years but had almost empty networks. The amount of traffic on 5G was single-digit, not significant. It was only for high-value customers. Here in Egypt, we didn’t jump to launch 5G; we launched it now at the right time. And you see, in just a few months, on my network, more than 5 million customers are actively using it. That’s a different story. So, it’s the right time to invest in a technology where people can benefit, not just for the claim. One lesson: don’t rush for the sake of technology. Investments should be linked to customer benefit.

What challenges does Egypt face with 5G rollout?

The main challenge is fiber. 5G generates massive traffic volumes, and only fiber can sustain that capacity. While we are proud to have the largest 5G coverage in Egypt—Vodafone serves nearly 53 million customers, almost half the country—we must accelerate fiber deployment to fully unlock 5G’s potential.

Sustainability is a global priority. How is Vodafone Egypt addressing it?

Yes, as a company, as a multinational, we have put very tough targets on protecting the planet. It’s a big pillar related to energy. This year, we were the first operation in our group to reach 100% green electricity. This means all the electricity consumed by our operation—sites, buildings—is matched one-to-one with electricity from renewable sources. The second objective is carbon reduction, which is harder. We try to reduce anything related to diesel and manage materials.

On sites, we put solar. Solar is still the main source of green energy to compensate for diesel. We have sites running 24/7 on diesel in deep rural areas with no electricity network, and sites with diesel generators for backup. It’s a huge effort and investment to eliminate or attenuate generator use with green sources. We innovate a lot in solar here in Egypt. Other countries inside Vodafone are copying from us. We have a lot of sun and a lot of literate experts. Our latest innovation, done with a local partner, is flexible solar panels that you put like a coat on a palm tree. It generates enough for a normal rural site.

With this solution, we reduced installation time by 50% and infrastructure cost by about 42%. That’s a model. While solar is the main green energy source, we are also piloting other solutions like hydrogen. You will see announcements soon once we are live.

How do you view Egypt’s workforce compared to Europe?

Egypt has a very high percentage of literate population. The last figure I have is around 73% of the aging population is literate. Honestly, as a CTO, I feel it. I have so many well-trained experts. I lead a technology unit of more than 2,000 people. From this team alone, we have more than 40 official patents from authorities like the UK or US. These are global patents, all submitted by Egyptians. I also have three or four IEEE senior members in my team, which is very rare. IEEE is a major technology organization. To be a senior member, you need to have published white papers and be highly recognized.

When I came, there were about 10 patents and 2 IEEE senior members. Now it’s over 40 patents. This is just a glimpse of the team I have. They are all Egyptians; I’m the only foreigner. I always say I’m the luckiest CTO in the world. My colleagues in Europe are jealous because I’m in a growing market with such a great team, achieving international recognition and world-first innovations. This comes from the fact that Egypt has a high percentage of people with good university education. 73% of a population of 108 million… in technology, I have all I need. I just need to motivate them to innovate. They are the best team I ever had in 36 years. It’s one reason why we innovate so much in AI, 5G, etc. We can talk the whole day about innovations.

From my personal life here, I see how literate people are. I asked a lady once for help moving apartments, and she told me she had attended two universities, speaking perfect English. It’s a personal proof of how literate Egypt is.

What is the main difference in your role as CTO between Europe and Egypt?

As I said, Europe is mature. In my last 15 years there, growth came from new services on top of connectivity—IoT, etc. As a CTO in Europe, I was focused on efficiency to generate funding for new investments. Growth wasn’t organic from population or coverage increase. Here, I am focused first on growth because there is so much growth to serve. If I don’t absorb it, existing customers will feel degraded experience. So, here I focus on growth from all angles, while in Europe, I focused on efficiency to fuel growth from new services, not pure connectivity. These are, in short, all the differences I see.

With a customer base exceeding 53 million, how does Vodafone ensure the delivery of excellent service?

It’s all about resilience. Let me explain what resilience means for Vodafone. First, consistency. You need to have a decent, if not the best, level of service everywhere, anytime. In a mobile world, you cannot have great speed in one spot and bad service 10 meters away. Consistency means the quality cannot go below a threshold where the customer feels it (video cracking, WhatsApp delays). That’s one angle.

The second is redundancy. You always have unexpected events (like the Ramses fire this year, fiber cuts, power outages, equipment failure). To avoid outages, you need to invest in redundancy: having two pieces of equipment so if one fails, the other takes over; geographical redundancy for data centers; double fiber connections.

When I came, we had only one fiber per data room. It took two years of work and investment to have two fibers and create a mesh network. All of this is serious investment—tens of millions of euros—not revenue-related, but resilience-related. When the Ramses fire happened, Vodafone was the only network that remained operational—the best example of why these matters. No network is 100% free of outages, but it’s about how you prepare, predict, absorb, and react. It takes money, years of investment, and design thinking from the beginning. It’s resilience by design.

AI has become a defining trend in technology. Do you leverage AI to identify and resolve problems, and if so, how?

I used to say we write code for breakfast. The software development and engineering capabilities we have here in Vodafone Egypt are amazing. We built a multi-country, cloud-based customer loyalty platform from scratch in nine months, now live serving tens of millions of customers. That’s the software power. Out of about 2,000 people in technology, close to half are in IT, and 99% of those are software developers. So, we develop in-house. Regarding AI, we started with automation and robotics (like UiPath) to automate manual tasks. Then, with more complex data from networks and crowdsourcing (billions of samples), you need AI and machine learning to process it in real-time. The revolution came with generative AI and now agentic AI. Generative AI can create content, and agentic AI can take decisions and execute. We have adopted generative AI and are now focused on agentic AI this year.

When I came from Europe, I expected to see a big Network Operations Center (NOC) with people monitoring screens 24/7. I asked to see our NOC and was told, “We are already in zero-touch NOC.” I said, “Seriously? On such a big network?” There are zero people whose job is to look at alarms. Alarms are automatically correlated using machine learning and AI to find the root cause, and the system automatically opens a ticket for the responsible engineer. We eliminated all the time needed for manual correlation. The team now focuses on creating new use cases and detecting deviations—small degradations before anyone feels them. That’s where we use AI and agentic AI. We have many use cases in both IT and network. We were already at zero-touch NOC when I arrived; now we’ve moved to using AI for predictive degradation detection. That’s how.

We are fortunate to have you here in Egypt.

The credit does not belong to me personally. My role is simply to inspire and encourage innovation. I may be the only foreigner, but the real strength lies in the team. It is their talent, dedication, and creativity that drive success.