Internet Blackout Costs Egypt £56m

The Egyptian government’s blocking of Internet services for five days is likely to have cost the country roughly $90 million (£56m), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The blocked telecommunication and Internet services account for between three and four percent of the country’s GDP, equivalent to a loss of $18 million (£11m) per day. However, the OECD warns that the long-term impact could be far greater, as the cut-off could have deterred foreign investors from expanding their operations in Egypt.

“Egypt has signed the OECD Seoul Declaration for the Future of the Internet Economy, which calls for an ‘open, decentralised and dynamic Internet’. This is vital to innovative businesses developing services on top of the Internet infrastructure,” said OECD spokesman Arthur Mickoleit in an emailed statement to eWEEK Europe.

“For this end the government has been promoting the adoption of telecommunication and the Internet throughout the country, but it might be difficult to win back some of that credit once the economy starts functioning normally again.”

Internet blackout

The Egyptian government is believed to have taken down the Internet on 28 January to prevent anti-Mubarak activists from co-ordinating a large-scale demonstration in Cairo. The Internet blackout paralysed 91 percent of Egypt’s Internet networks for five days, before the country came back online on 2 February.

The country is served by only four ISPs but it appears that the government ordered the shutdown of the local Domain Name System (DNS) and Border Gateway Protocol, rendering it impossible for the ISPs to direct traffic. Many turned to a service launched by Google that allows people to post Twitter messages by ringing up and leaving voice messages.

According to statistics from Internet resource distributor RIPE, online activities among Egyptian organisations are now surging rapidly. The graph below from Arbor Networks shows Egypt coming back online yesterday.