Egypt blocked Facebook
Inc’s Free Basics Internet service at the end of last year after the U.S. Company
rejected to give the Egyptian government the ability to scout on users, two
people familiar with the matter said.
Free
Basics, launched in Egypt in October, is aimed at low-income customers,
allowing anyone with a low-priced computer or smartphone to create a Facebook
account and access a limited set of Internet services at no charge.
The
Egyptian government postponed the service on December 30 and said at the time
that the mobile carter Etisalat had only been granted a temporary permit to
offer the service for two months.
Two
sources with direct knowledge of discussions between Facebook and the Egyptian
government said Free Basics was blocked because the company would not allow the
government to avoid the service’s security to conduct observation. They
declined to say correctly what type of access the government had demanded or
what practices it wanted Facebook to change.
A
spokesman for Facebook decayed to comment. Etisalat did not respond to a
request for comment.
Mohamed
Hanafi, a spokesman for Egypt’s Ministry of Communication, declined to comment
specifically on the contention about surveillance demands but cited other
reasons for Free Basics to be blocked.
"The
service was offered free of charge to the consumer, and the national
telecommunication regulator saw the service as harmful to companies and their
competitors," he said.
Free
Basics, which is available in 37 countries that have large residents without
reliable Internet service, is central to Facebook’s global strategy. The
company does not sell ads on the Free Basics version of its website and app,
but it aims to reach a large group of possible users who otherwise would not be
able to create Facebook accounts.
Facebook
said more than 3 million Egyptians used the service before it was suspended,
and 1 million of them had never had Internet access. The main Facebook site and
app are still available in Egypt, which has a population of about 90 million.
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