Phone users in Baghdad had a brief interlude of phone service until corporate America’s managers realized that it might reduce the value of the monopolies they planned to create:

The U.S.-led authority in Iraq — which wants to hold a tender for three regional mobile phone licences — asked Batelco to shut down. A renegade service provider could throw a spanner into its plans for a tender for the licences, among the most potentially lucrative contracts to be offered in Iraq.
Iraq was frozen out of a global boom in personal portable phones by Saddam’s secret state. But mobile phones sprang unexpectedly to life a week ago, delighting cellphone users who could make and receive calls around the world.

Hmmm, also the military may want to maintain the ‘secret state’ for a while more.
Via David Marston at Catallarchy.