Egyptian telecommunications regulator has set new rules for companies sending text messages to multiple mobile phones. In a move according to activists; they will stifle efforts to mobilize voters ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections.

Reform groups in Egypt, as well as elsewhere in the region such as Iran, have increasingly relied on the Internet and mobile phones to organize, mobilize and avoid government harassment.

According to Mahmoud el-Gweini, adviser to the Egyptian telecommunication minister, companies sending out text messages — known as SMS aggregators — must now obtain licenses. The decision was not meant to curb political activity, but was spurred by concerns that random text messages concerning sensitive issues such as religious tension or the stock market could be sent to consumers. There are over 60 million users. The mobile phone has become a tool in everyone’s hand. People can misuse the tools in the hands of the 60 million and send the wrong messages for one reason or another.

Mahmoud el-Gweini further added that content providers, whether news services or political parties, will also need to get approval from the concerned authorities. Some 15 companies each need to pay $88,000 by next week for registration licenses and an equivalent amount as a letter of guarantee. The ministry is not making life difficult, but is making life organized, that is all.

Text messages were an affective campaign tool for the illegal Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in 2005, which shocked the government by winning 20% of the parliament seats in the last elections.

According to El-Gweini, only registered political parties can register to use mass text messages in the upcoming elections and the ruling party has already been granted a permit. The government has already told the mobile operators, that for the licensed parties, just go ahead and implement. The operators don’t have to come to the government.

In Egypt’s tightly controlled political environment, a government-run committee approves who can form parties and some of the country’s most vibrant opposition trends are not licensed.

Activists claim that targeting the text messaging market constitutes veiled censorship and is just the latest measure to curb independent voices ahead of the heated elections set for the end of November.

Parliamentary elections are taking place this year against a tense backdrop of increasingly disgruntled people, rising food prices and new reform groups who say their demands are ignored by the government.

According to Moustafa el-Naggar, a member of a new reform movement led by Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, his group was contemplating using mass text messages to mobilize its members. They are trying to strip the opposition of all its tools. But the members will find new ones.