Vodafone under fire over unmet Egypt pledges The group, The Industry Dialogue on Freedom of Expression and Privacy, set itself a deadline of the end of 2012 to publish its final proposals. It has not yet done so. Access, a New York-based lobby group, has now written to Vodafone and other mobile operators who signed up to the project, including O2"s parent company Telefonica and EE shareholder France Telecom, to tell them that their behaviour is "unacceptable." "The slow pace of the Industry Dialogue stands in stark contrast with the quick, border-leaping expansion of international telecoms companies, even into conflicted regions lacking rule of law," wrote director Brett Solomon in the letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph. Massive network shutdowns still occur, millions of law enforcement requests for user data go unreported, and abusive state security forces gain access to the very networks telcos operate. Whether they are rightly or wrongly accused of complicity in what are often government-led persecutions, [mobile operators] lack a consistent, industry-wide approach to the immense pressures they face in many different regions. Mr Solomon added that the industry group and "most of its member companies are brushing their responsibilities under the carpet and hoping no one will notice." A Vodafone spokesman said: "We agree with Access but the difficulty is coming up with a workable solution. These are complicated issues because governments have different approaches to licensing regimes, and the balance between public information [and safety on the one hand] and freedom of communication and civil rights. The company argues that, had it not shut its network down for 24 hours, the Egyptian government could have pulled the plug itself in a way that would have taken far longer to restore normal service after the blackout. It also says that the government hijacked a system that allows it to send public information announcements in order to send the propaganda text messages, which, for example, called on "every honest citizen [to] preserve this country as the nation forever." Vodafone stopped sending them as soon as it was able.