A ban allegedly issued from Egypt’s National Telecommunications Regulation Authority (NTRA) has prevented many across the country from using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, sparking outrage on social media. Several outraged Facebook and Twitter users spoke out against the ban using the hashtag #SaveTheInternet, which became Egypt’s top trending hashtag on Twitter after the news broke on Monday. Today in #Egyptian ‘democracy’ #انقذوا_الانترنت #ثورة_الانترنت pic.twitter.com/mdhXaIsUqU — Amr No 2 CC (@Cairo67Unedited) October 5, 2015 Last week Sisi said Egypt enjoys unprecedented freedom of expression.Now Skype,Whatsapp&Viber are blcked for nat’l security #انقذوا_الانترنت — Anج (@Angieslyst) October 5, 2015 The NTRA issued a statement denying issuing the ban, asserting that this was only a “rumor,” state news agency MENA reported on Monday. NTRA customer service representatives also insisted that such a decision “would have to come from the service providers.” However, customer service representatives from each of Vodafone, Mobinil and Etisalat – Egypt’s three mobile phone service providers – confirmed that the NTRA issued a declaration notifying the companies of a decision to disable Skype usage. Thus far, the official statement applies to Skype use from 3G networks, meaning that the…
Social Media Users Enraged Over Alleged Skype, Viber, WhatsApp Ban in Egypt
October 7, 2015
