[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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