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Egypt Internet Down: Egypt.gov Down, Major ISP's Disrupted

by NowPublic Staff | January 27, 2011 at 05:09 pm

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Egypt Internet Down: Massive Internet, Wireless, Cellular, SMS Disruptions Reported: Internet Service Providers Down: TeData, Vodafone, MenaNet, Egypt.Gov Down

The internet in Egypt appears to be down at least various networks including cellular/SMS, and wireless networks have been disrupted after days of unrest in Cairo and other cities.

Video: Egyptian Protester Being Shot By Police (warning graphic violence)

The interior ministry had said in a statement late Thursday it would take "decisive measures" against dissidents who planned protests after Friday noon prayers, saying the activists "sent messages to citizens to gather in a number of mosques in the provinces during Friday prayers."

It seems that would apply to the government of Egypt's own website, egypt.gov is down.

Because of the disruption in communication services in Egypt it is proving difficult to determine exactly what services are being affected - but it is clear the internet disruption is extensive.

Here is what is being reported;

BlackBerry service provided by the three main carriers there, Mobinil, Vodafone, and Etisalat, has been shut down, according to a flood of tweets from the area. Twitter and Facebook access has already been restricted in order to clamp down on the organization of further protests.BlackBerry’s blockage is significant because it could have presented a secure channel separate from standard smartphone data that might have been able to get to outside servers.

Having said that there are Tweets coming out of Cairo and other parts of Egypt likely because Twitter can be used via text messaging which run on cellular networks - it is far tougher for the government to shut those down since security forces rely on the very same networks.

At the time of this post the Vodafone Egypt website is offline. Multiple reports from Twitter indicate that Vodafone has been taken down in Egypt. Another website for an Internet Service Provides from Egypt, Egynet appears to be down. The website for a third ISP in Egypt, TeData, is also down. MenaNet, an Egyptian dial-up Internet Service Providers is down too. (5:00 pm PST).

This Full list of Internet Service Providers in Egypt provides hyper links to the home page of those Egyptian ISP's - all the ones I tried were down.

This report from The Arabist blog seems confirm that the government is at the very least shutting down ISP's in Egypt.

I just received a call from a friend in Cairo (I won't say who it is now because he's a prominent activist) telling me neither his DSL nor his USB internet service is working. I've just checked with two other friends in different parts of Cairo and their internet is not working either...

Will update with more info. The ISPs being used by my friends are TEDATA, Vodafone, and Egynet.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, blogs like The Arabist are reporting the the ISP's in Egypt started going down minutes after an video of police shooting a protester was captured on tape and posted to the internet, distributed by the Associated Press.

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Jordan Yerman

at 17:19 on January 27th, 2011

Remember, the power to shut down citizen internet access is something that Joe Lieberman wants for the US. Hopefully now people can see why that's such a bad idea, if they were unable to imagine it in abstract before.