no GPS use in Egypt
Oct 13, 2008 gps navigation, misc news
There’s no point in getting a fancy phone with GPS or A-GPS in Egypt for the government has a strict ban on the use of such devices. Other countries where government does not want its citizens not know where they’re headed are Syria and North Korea.
The ban also includes other GPS enabled electronics such car GPS navigation systems and handheld GPS receivers.
Mobile phones like the Nokia N95, N82 as well as iPhones and some 3G phones are banned in Egypt, leaving the market deprived of the latest technology and features that are fast becoming standard in the new generation of mobile phones.
Sources say GPS is allowed if and only if you can get license after getting approval from security authorities and National Telecommunication Regulator Agency.
We’d like to hear from our Egyptian readers or other who have visited there recently…
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October 13th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Will they confiscate your GPS capable phone if they find it when you enter the country? And will they give it back?
October 14th, 2008 at 7:07 am
First, North Korea, then Syria…now Egypt!!! My vacation plans are ruined.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
No GPS in Cuba. They will confiscate the unit at the airport.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
[...] No GPS use in Egypt (Navigadget) [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 3:22 am
[...] Navigadget // [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 8:04 am
[...] Vía | Navigadget [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 9:11 am
lol at FreddyB….
October 21st, 2008 at 10:25 am
i live in Egypt and i see police officers in egypt having an N95 :-)
give it time…
October 30th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
No, they will not confiscate your GPS capable phones. In fact those phones ARE sold in Egypt but unofficially, that is ther are not imported through regular dealers.
The lack of proper maps is going to be your problem not the handset itself :)
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:13 am
These phones are available in mostly every mobile shop in Egypt. They will not be conficated at the airport as the officals only ask for computers. A mobile is a mobile to these guys. Mobiles of all types are allowed. They have no idea what a GPS mobile is. Even if you showed this telephone to the customs officals (and who would be stupid enough to do that freely?!?) the customs guys would not even know they were GPS capable. But in doing this you still may be unlucky and have to pay a “fine” for entry if they are feeling that you could be scammed into giving away money for nothing as they will always try for anything they can get off the tourists because they are just corrupt & they think they can get away with it!! More importantly, the fact that there is no GPS maps available for Egypt makes the whole idea of bringing your phone to use in Egypt a waste of time. I bring my GPS mobile in & out of Egypt regularly since I visit Europe quite often. Even if it is supposed to be “illegal” they will still be able to work if there is a map, as mine works! If anybody knows where I can get a map of Egypt for my GPS mobile I would be very thankful!
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Long live Egypt!
December 6th, 2008 at 12:33 am
what will you do with a gps if you have no map for egypt anywhere
December 10th, 2008 at 2:43 am
[...] when we talked about the Egyptian government ban on GPS devices? Well apparently Apple complied and now is offering their iPhone 3G without the GPS feature [...]
December 13th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Gps phone enter egypt by this is legal
December 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Some friends of mine regularly use their GPS systems when they go into the desert on raids, otherwise it’s pretty difficult to use it in Cairo, due to the maze of streets that continuously change directions!
December 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Well, the only correct reply i found among all the posted replies up there is the one from Amr. It’s true that A-GPS phones are unofficially sold everywhere in egypt..and it’s not true that there’s are no maps for egypt. Nokia offers a great routable map that includes both cairo and alexandria.. also, on many web sites a lot of gps maps for egypt are provided for free to whoever is interested. Those maps are usually made by amateurs who want to share their knowledge with others. The making of gps maps (img. format) is not difficult and there is a lot of available free programs that are simple to use for the more serious gps users. Having a Gps device in egypt is a lot of fun and i, as an egyptian consider it a must to have one in order to find my way through either on or off road.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:38 am
You can always go to tis site, http://www.openstreetmap.org/
and download them to u’er garmin device or smartphone by
http://cloudmade.com/ it has many formats .IMG too
these 2 site are create by Ametures, i even helped a little u can to…
it’s easy.
create your route and use mgmaps http://www.mgmaps.com/
download it on your phone, it’s java so it should work with all phone GPS enabled.
by the way Google maps are getting better, soon they will be better than Nokia Maps.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Well, guys there are couple of nav applications that runs on PDA’s or Sembian that have decent maps of egypt, I ve been using them YEARs ago, just try not to get caught :)
February 26th, 2009 at 7:43 am
they say it’s illegal ,, there are maps for egypt (cairo and alexandria only ) and the gps works just fine ;)
April 5th, 2009 at 6:06 am
I was told they will not confiscate the GPS, because there is no legal law prevent from owning one although there is no clear encouragement for using GPS.
It is a grey area… unlike un-licence guns… so by law, carrying un-licence GPS is not legally equal to carrying un-licence gun. Again, it is true that for commercial use (i.e. oil & mining companies need licence to operate with GPS).
The typical common handheld GPS is ONLY a receiving device and the ones that are more problematic are the sending ones (i.e. two-way radio GPS units)
April 5th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Finally, the ban has been lifted!
http://tinyurl.com/c7zsyf
April 6th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Finally they allowed GPS navigation system this week in Egypt !!!
April 12th, 2009 at 2:12 am
Maybe someone important decided to get a GPS phone, so they decided to make it legal!!
July 20th, 2009 at 10:21 am
hey..i have nokia n82 and i want to download GPS MAPS for egypt but i cant find it..if anyone knows how can i download it plz reply..thnxxx
November 8th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Cairo Travel…
(To be fair, the display is rounded out by Egypt’ s Anwar el- Sadat, West Germany’ s Konrad Adenauer and Japan’ s Shigeru Yoshida.)…
November 10th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Jyst checked with managing drector of a big map company. accroding to hime it is legal now. Try the following companies who have maps.
Sygic, Ndrive, Copilot. Most of them support symbian. although nothing compared to Garmin, garmin supports PDA windows mobile, symbian, Blactberry (Online only)