Egyptian Government Intrudes on Mobile Operators

Vodafone and France Télécom, facing heat for complying with the Egyptian government's order to pull the plug on their networks last week, said that Egypt's government forced its way onto their mobile networks to send text messages directly to the country's people.

Vodafone said the government invoked emergency powers under Egypt's Telecom Act to send the text messages against the company's will. Vodafone, which runs Egypt's biggest mobile carrier by customers through a joint venture with state-controlled Telecom Egypt, said it protested the action and "made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator." France Télécom, which runs mobile carrier Mobinil in a joint venture with Orascom Telecom Holding, said the Egyptian army forced it to send texts to its customers, though it said the only army-endorsed messages processed by Mobini concerned "national security and general safety." Vodafone said the text-messaging capability of it and other mobile operators in Egypt has been shut down since mass protests began late last week. But Egyptian authorities appear to have opened the networks briefly at times to send pro-government texts.