Mobile phone service went ‘a little funny’ in Moscow during Saturday's protests

Mobile phone service went a little fuzzy during Saturday’s anti-Putin protest at Pushkin Square in Moscow. In correspondence between Tele2 and a client (published on the Telegram channel ZaTelekom), the company said the service disruptions were the result of “work to improve communications quality.” That work apparently coincided exactly with the timing and location of Saturday’s rally against the president.

Also over the weekend, the blogger Denis Styazhkin published his correspondence with the technical support desk at the telephone company Beeline, which told him that his number had been blocked temporarily (during Saturday’s demonstration) on orders from the police. Beeline later denied this claim.