Etisalat Egypt, the country's third largest telecom operator, announced its new summer services, “Ashabi for social networking and emailty [email me] for email usage,” for its Blackberry clients. The “Ashabi” service will provide unlimited usage of social networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace along with other chatting programs like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ. The second service provides unlimited email checking if the user has an account with Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. Sherif Amin, the head of services and products at Etisalat Egypt said that his company provides “these services for the very first time trying to make the summer more fun for its customers.” Amin added that clients can choose to either pay 1.99 Egyptian pounds daily or a monthly subscription of 49 Egyptian pounds for the unlimited service additions. Etisalat is seeing a massive rise in subscribers this year after many of competitor Mobinil transferred their accounts to the company and Vodafone Egypt after Naguib Sawiris, Mobinil's parent company Orascom Telecom's chief, shared a cartoon on his Twitter account that many Muslims found insulting. The cartoon features the Disney character Mickey Mouse in an Islamic dress and beard. Sawiris later apologized publicly, saying the cartoon was a joke, but many felt the need to transfer their services anyway. BM
