Instead he started his next company devoted to bringing down roaming tariffs for mobile-phone users in Switzerland, where the labour laws are less of a deterrent.
Any customers who do not sign up for a so-called Eurotariff will automatically be put on one from 30 September, unless they are already on another special roaming deal from their mobilephone operator.
The Western tourists trapped in Khorog last week managed to call on their embassies for help only because two of them had roaming smartphones that caught a mobile-phone signal from neighboring Afghanistan, they said.