Egypt was forced back to the pre-Internet age when parts of country went offline
In a move not seen before, the Egyptian government shut down all Internet traffic Friday amid massive demonstrations and borderline war breakout. All surrounding people calling for President Hosni Mubarek’s resignation.
It started out with a reported few sites being blocked including social network sites, then escalated to an entire government controlled Internet shut down for parts of Egypt. This doesn’t affect the majority of Egypt’s population who live in abject poverty. In fact, only about 25% of the population has Internet access.
That said, it does bring Egypt back to pre-Internet days with much of the real time news feeds from multiple sources, both professional and amateur, being brought to a sudden halt.
James Cowie who works for Renesys, a firm based in the United States that monitors and tracks traffic over the Internet, was one of the first to report the large scale disconnection.
“Every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world,” Cowie said.
A few savvy Egyptians were able to circumvent the disconnection through the use of satellite based Internet. It also appears Egypt didn’t completely block all electronic communications. Text messages via cell phones were making it out sporadically according to reports from those inside the country.
