Phones disrupted, SMS and Blackberry

I have received confirmation from a person in a position to know at one Egypt's mobile phone operators that the phone companies have been ordered by the authorities to shut down SMS services (which has been the case for at least an hour) and Blackberry Messenging in Cairo (and perhaps elsewhere in Egypt).

This is on top of more confirmation that internet is not available at least in the Cairo area.

There is a certain irony that I am reporting this from Tunisia, until recently the Arab country with probably the most sophisticated internet censorship in the Arab world.