Egypt’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has announced plans to lift the commercial GPS ban in the country. Back in December, after Apple was forced to modify its 3G iPhone to ship it to Egypt in order to disable the GPS, we discussed how faulty the government logic was. After all, any security concerns posed by GPS could arguably be outdone by coverage on Google Earth and Maps. Furthermore, plenty of Egyptians purchase GPS-enabled phones over the internet or from smugglers anyway. There was really no point to the Egypt government continuing the GPS ban.
While the NTRA did lift the ban, the organization will still enforce some fairly strict rules. It’ll have to oversee all GPS shipments into the country, it will control all local manufacturing, and the use of in-vehicle GPS will be tightly regulated. For what reason, I’m not sure.
That leaves Syria and North Korea as the only two countries in the world to still ban commercial GPS. In fact North Korea is so anti-GPS, it is known for its production of GPS jamming devices.