Egypt: A day without mobile in protest of service price increase

The Egyptian citizens rights committee has called on customers of the two Egyptian mobile companies to boycott the services of the two companies for 24 hours in protest for the increase of their prices.

The chairpersons of the committee, Fareeda al-Shoubashi, said that the committee called on the customers of " Egypt Fodaphone " and " Mobile Nile" to implement this boycott as from Wednesday midnight to Thursday midnight as a beginning of an escalated protest.

The committee threatened that this one day boycott, if not successful, will increase to one week and to one month, calling on the government to quickly issue a decision banning monopoly, and to found a third mobile company so as to break the monopoly of the two already standing said companies.

Al-Shoubashi said that the demands of the committee are a public one, noting they have a plan that might call people to hold a referendum over the mobile phone companies.

Both Fodaphone and Mobile Nile introduced in January amendments of tariffs of their services that resulted in an increase in the subscription fee of pre-paid cards.

However, the two companies introduced new amendments later that lessened the costs under the pressure of a conference held by citizens right committee on January 7th in which the principle of gradual boycott was adopted.

The Mobile Nile company announced last week that its costs in 2003 reached 915 million Egyptian pounds, representing an increase of 493 million Egyptian pounds over the figures of 2002 as a result of 709,000 new subscribers against 424,000 in 2002.

Worthy mentioning that the citizens right is an under construction civil society. It works through the journalists and lawyers associations and includes activists from the two sides and human rights advocates.