Israel's Electricity authority, has issued the Israeli Electricity Corporation (IEC) a permit to engage in communications and in particular provide Internet infrastructure. The permit is subject to separating the communication business from the day-to-day electricity activities of IEC, and forming a separate company that IEC may hold only 49% of its shares. This was noted to be important due to the fact that IEC is a monopoly in Israel. Opponents to the permit feared that IEC might subsidize its communications activities on the expense of electricity users. IEC intends to use its fiber optic infrastructure, which was laid down over the past few years, and expects to provide an Internet connection of 1 Giga Bit per second. However, the company is not allowed to supply its services directly to private consumers and may only license its fiber optic cables to ISPs. Source: Calcalist (Hebrew)