Posted on February 2nd, 2011Egypt’s internet access was turned off right past Friday midnight according to an associated press news report.
Internet security service Renesys reveals that the 4 main ISPs of Egypt- Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr- all were called off at the same time around 12.34 am Friday night. On Friday morning over 88 percent of Egyptian internet transmission were blocked as reported by internet traffic monitoring company, BGPmon. This dramatic incident has taken place when a large number of civilians were out on the streets as a protest to the 30 year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
A lot of leading industry personnel opined that it has come as shock that a company with a blooming Internet activity would alienate itself totally from the global network only to blow out the Protestants opposing against the government.
Jim Cowie, the CTO and co-founder of Renesys, comments that such a situation can never happen in the United States as the country has far more ISPs and connection terminals to the internet. Consequently, managing a simultaneous, nationwide shut down of internet access would be a seemingly impossible task.
“It can’t happen here,” said Cowie. “How many people would you have to call to shut down the US Internet? Hundreds, thousands maybe? We have enough Internet here that we can have our own Internet. If you cut it off, that leads to a philosophical question: Who got cut off from the Internet, us or the rest of the world?”
Industry experts have further shown amazement at the fact that a country and developed economy would be able to keep its internet connection in one centralized location or just a couple of locations with so much control that the whole supply can be cut off in moments simultaneously. The nationwide internet shutdown goes to prove that the Egyptian government maintains a stronghold on the passage of information through the ISPs and can control the daily lives of people just as strongly.
There have been cases of governments putting internet access on hold to stop outrages. Either internet was restricted or some sites were censored. Last year China amazed the world by censoring Google search results for its civilians. In 2009, Iran put off information exchange over the net for silencing its controversial elections’ after-effects. However, all these countries resorted to partial disruptions while in Egypt’s case it had been extensive, including mobile phones and laptop network access.