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Last weekend in Egypt most of the country’s mobile phone service was shut off while some BlackBerry devices quietly continued to work, keeping citizens of Egypt connected with the rest of the world.
The outages seem to have varied from service provider to service provider. Users of conventional mobile phones faced a complete service outage. (BlackBerry’s market reach within Egypt has been limited due to the product’s high price point, and most Egyptians illegally accessing the internet did so through anonymizers such as the Tor Project and anonymous dial-up points).