/ Xeni Jardin / 2:47 pm Fri Jan 28, 2011

Egypt: without internet, country may face "economic doom" Monday

Wilson Rothman at MSNBC.com: "Egypt's government must return Internet access to the country by Monday or perhaps suffer massive economic damage, as banks and other economic institutions return to work without the ability to conduct commerce." (Background here and here on BB)

2

  1. Mubarak seems to have left open one ISP — Noor Group. Noor Group handles the Egyptian Stock Exchange. Whether this was intentional or unintentional is unknown.

    Not to say that economic harm won’t come from the internet shutdown, but if Wilson Rothman is attempting to speak about stock trading, that appears to be in some form intact, but as to the extent trading can occur, who knows.

    More info at Renesys about the Noor exception:
    http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/egypt-leaves-the-internet.shtml

  2. Well a few small points to add to the previous comment:

    Having spent the entire previous day setting up a primary and then desperately looking along with others for second and tertiary communication methods to get data out of certain areas, I can confirm that Noor Group has had their connection/node up this entire time. It’s even been used (sometimes with and sometimes without them knowing) to transmit little bits of data like reports, photos, a an occasional video and of course random correspondence from others inquiring about friends and family separated from them.

    That being said, there is probably 50x the number of satellite equipment now in the country than there was when i got that first wake-up satellite call at 3am (mountain time USA) to setup a gateway for their phone to be able to xmit live photos (well less than a minute delay, but still…important content not privy to the outside world so an <1 delay is damn fast as far as I'm concerned). Plus its a lot more powerful than just the hand-helds that were used by the embedded ones who were witness to the entire start->still going.

    And just in case, i can also assure you there have been other internet methods discovered as well as put in place so that as far as important data being xfered either way (esp financial data) – any market loss due to data downtime i would see as only a temp. issue as traffic methods would change. I’d bet good money they’re already in contact/aware of their options (the financial firms i mean)

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