[LINK] Rebels Hijack Gadhafi's Phone Network

fernando cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Thu Apr 14 14:26:58 AEST 2011


[Very interesting reading. Now what the world needs is a world-wide 
militia to hijack the mobile phone company networks in every country and 
run it on a cooperative basis ;-). Or isn´t it worth a revolution to 
eliminate the greedy mobile phone companies once and for all? JOKE JOKE -FC]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703841904576256512991215284.html

A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels 
hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi's cellphone network and re-establish their 
own communications.

The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with 
the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million 
Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world 
after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a 
month ago.

That March cutoff had rebels waving flags to communicate on the 
battlefield. The new cellphone network, opened on April 2, has become 
the opposition's main tool for communicating from the front lines in the 
east and up the chain of command to rebel brass hundreds of miles away.

A rebel fighter rested at the frontline at the western entrance of 
Ajdabiyah.

While cellphones haven't given rebel fighters the military strength to 
decisively drive Col. Gadhafi from power, the network has enabled rebel 
leaders to more easily make the calls needed to rally international 
backing, source weapons and strategize with their envoys abroad.

To make that possible, engineeers hived off part of the Libyana 
cellphone network—owned and operated by the Tripoli-based Libyan General 
Telecommunications Authority, which is run by Col. Gadhafi's eldest 
son—and rewired it to run independently of the regime's control. 
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, asked about the rebel cellphone 
network, said he hadn't heard of it.

Ousama Abushagur, a 31-year-old Libyan telecom executive raised in 
Huntsville, Ala., masterminded the operation from his home in Abu Dhabi. 
Mr. Abushagur and two childhood friends working as corporate managers in 
Dubai and Doha started fund-raising on Feb. 17 to support the political 
protests that were emerging in Libya. By Feb. 23, when fighting had 
erupted, his team delivered the first of multiple humanitarian aid 
convoys to eastern Libya.

But while in Libya, they found their cellphones and Thuraya satellite 
phones jammed or out of commission, making planning and logistics 
challenging.

Security was also an issue. Col. Gadhafi had built his 
telecommunications infrastructure to fan out from Tripoli—routing all 
calls through the capital and giving him and his intelligence agents 
full control over phones and Internet.

On March 6, during a flight back to the United Arab Emirates after 
organizing a naval convoy to the embattled city of Misrata, Mr. 
Abushagur says he drew up a diagram on the back of a napkin for a plan 
to infiltrate Libyana, pirate the signal and carve out a network free of 
Tripoli's control.

What followed was a race against time to solve the technical, 
engineering and legal challenges before the nascent rebel-led governing 
authority was crushed under the weight of Col. Gadhafi's better-equipped 
forces. After a week of victories in which the rebels swept westward 
from Benghazi toward Col. Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, the rebel advance 
stalled and reversed on March 17, when the United Nations approved a 
no-fly zone and government forces kicked off a fierce counterattack.

In a sign of deepening ties between Arab governments and the 
Benghazi-based administration, the U.A.E. and Qatar provided diplomatic 
support and helped buy the several million dollars of telecommunications 
equipment needed in Benghazi, according to members of the Libyan 
transitional authority and people familiar with the situation.

Meanwhile, rebel military commanders were using flags to signal with 
their troops, a throw-back that proved disastrous to their attempts at 
holding their front lines.

"We went to fight with flags: Yellow meant retreat, green meant 
advance," said Gen. Ahmed al-Ghatrani, a rebel commander in Benghazi. 
"Gadhafi forced us back to the stone age."


      On Edge in Libya

Renewed signal jamming also meant that rebel leaders and residents in 
Benghazi had little warning of the government forces' offensive across 
east Libya and the March 19 attempted invasion of Benghazi, which 
sparked panicked civilian evacuations of the city.

Mr. Abushagur watched the government advances with alarm. His secret 
cellphone operation had also run into steep problems.

The Chinese company Huawei Technologies Ltd., one of the original 
contractors for Libyana's cellular network backbone, refused to sell 
equipment for the rebel project, causing Mr. Abushagur and his engineer 
buddies to scramble to find a hybrid technical solution to match other 
companies' hardware with the existing Libyan network. Huawei declined to 
comment on its customers or work in Libya. The Libyan expats in the 
project asked that their corporate affiliations be kept confidential so 
that their political activities don't interfere with their work 
responsibilities.

Without Huawei, the backing from the Persian Gulf nations became 
essential—otherwise it is unlikely that international telecom vendors 
would have sold the sophisticated machinery to an unrecognized rebel 
government or individual businessmen, according to people familiar with 
the situation.

"The Emirates government and [its telecommunications company] Etisalat 
helped us by providing the equipment we needed to operate Libyana at 
full capacity," said Faisal al-Safi, a Benghazi official who oversees 
transportation and communications issues.

U.A.E. and Qatari officials didn't respond to requests for comment. 
Emirates Telecommunications Corp., known as Etisalat, declined to comment.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703841904576256512991215284.html#>After 
42 years under Moammar Gadhafi's rule, it's hard to imagine what Libya 
could look like without the dictator in power. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports 
from Washington on the cloudy outlook for the north African nation.

By March 21, most of the main pieces of equipment had arrived in the 
U.A.E. and Mr. Abushagur was ready to ship them to Benghazi with three 
Libyan telecom engineers, four Western engineers and a team of bodyguards.

But Col. Gadhafi's forces were still threatening to overrun the rebel 
capital and trying to bomb its airport. Mr. Abushagur diverted the team 
and their equipment to an Egyptian air base on the Libyan border. 
Customs bureaucracy cost them a week, though Egypt's eventual approval 
was another show of Arab support for rebels. Egypt's governing military 
council couldn't be reached for comment.

Once in Libya, the team paired with Libyana engineers and executives 
based in Benghazi. Together, they fused the new equipment into the 
existing cellphone network, creating an independent data and routing 
system free from Tripoli's command.

The team also captured the Tripoli-based database of phone numbers, 
giving them information necessary to patch existing Libyana customers 
and phone numbers into their new system—which they dubbed "Free 
Libyana." The last piece of the puzzle was securing a satellite feed 
through which the Free Libyana calls could be routed—a solution provided 
by Etisalat, according to Benghazi officials.

A Libyan rebel stood guard Tuesday on a checkpoint between Brega and 
Ajdabiya. Rebels now can use cellphones to communicate between the front 
lines and opposition leaders.

On April 2, Mr. Abushagur placed a test call on the system to his wife 
back in Abu Dhabi. "She's the one who told me to go for it in the first 
place," he said.

International calling from Libya is still limited to the few individuals 
and officials in eastern Libya who most need it. Incoming calls have to 
be paid for by prepaid calling cards, except for Jordan, Egypt and Qatar.

Domestic calling works throughout eastern Libya up until the Ajdabiya, 
the last rebel-held town in the east. An added bonus of the new network: 
It is free for domestic calls, at least until Free Libyana gets a 
billing system up and running.





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