ted that the revolutionary movements that swept through Tunisia, Syria and Libya in 2011 were enabled to a significant degree by SMS texting combined with picture messaging and video feeds to U tube. If this is true then apparently mobile phones can dictate to dictators. It can also save lives. Over the past ten years the telecoms industry has had to respond to a series of natural disasters, Katrina, The Asian Tsunami, the Chinese Earthquake and unnatural disasters in- cluding 9/11. These events disappear from the daily news but have a long-term impact on the 2 http://www.safaricom.co.ke/index.php?id=745. 3 http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/about_us/money_transfer.html, 4 http://www.icenimobile.com/. 5http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/2009/12/uk-consumers-embrace-digital-communications/ 5 SMS statistics from Short Message Service (SMS) The Creation of Personal Global Text Messaging by Fred Hillebrand.http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470688653.htmland also 'GSM and UMTS the creation of mobile communication', edited by Fred Hillebrand, also John Wiley. Transaction-Centric Software telecommunications industry. Conversely the telecommunications industry has had a vital role to play in responding to the events both in the immediate aftermath and in the longer-term recovery and rebuilding process. In the specific context of the role of SMS, the following announcement is from May 2008. 'Earthquake Collapses China's Unicom's Two Networks May 13, 2008 China Unicom (CHU) says that due to the earthquake, its G net and C net in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province have both broken. About 200 base stations of the company's G net and C net in the Aba area of Sichuan have reportedly been paralyzed. And because of busy traffic, the company's two networks in Chengdu have been congested, thus resulting in a slowdown of SMS communications. As a result of the earthquake, the communications of four counties in south Gansu Province have also been interrupted and about 500 base stations in Shaanxi Province halted. China U