You’d think someone who specialises in blogging about “public diplomacy” would notice when someone refloats a rah rah painted school success story from 2003. Iraqna didn’t “happen”; Orascom built it back then, and didn’t we all hear so much about how Iraqis had mobile phones? You didn’t hear so much, outside the trade, about how a certain Republican congressman tried to stop them having phones that would work anywhere else in the Middle East (except for a certain country). But they did it anyway.
Now Zain (aka MTC Atheer, aka now owned by the Kuwaitis – strange they didn’t put that in the brand) has bought out the central Iraq licence. Either way, I’d be surprised if anyone rolled out a green field GSM net in 2003 that didn’t support GPRS out of the box, so I rate this one “bollocks”. Perhaps they’ve started offering hosted Blackberry service. Frankly, if I were an Iraqi politician, the last thing in the world I’d want would be a device that forces all my e-mail through data centres located in Canada and the UK, using its own encryption.