Renewed calls for mobile phone boycott

SMN No. 13, February 2, 2011

Syrian internet activists have renewed their call for a boycott of two local mobile phone companies on February 9.

Some 14,000 people joined the Facebook group set up to promote the action against MTN and Syriatel, in the largest protest of its kind so far organised in the country.

The Facebook group claimed that the companies had “high prices and poor service and monopoly” and urged people not to use their networks for one hour a day between February 9 and February 20.

Another page called for a boycott of the two above mentioned companies because they allegedly blocked mobile chat services such as Nimbuzz, ebuddy, opera mini and mig33. Especially young people use these chat services via mobile Internet to reduce their mobile phone costs – which means the phone companies make less profit.

People should be “trying not to call or use SMS or internet through mobile or any other service, and trying not to call unless it’s too necessary and for not more than one minute,” the Facebook organizers wrote.

Similar calls were made through Facebook groups last year, organised by independent youth not linked to the traditional Syrian opposition movement.

There are only two mobile phone operators in Syria, one of which is owned by the businessman Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad. Syrians frequently complain that both companies offer poor services at high prices.

Research published last November by the Jordanian-based Arab Advisors Group ranked Syria second after Morocco among Arab nations in terms of the high prices of mobile phone service.

There are more than 10 million mobile phone subscribers in Syria.