Blocking Internet cost Egypt at least $90M, says OECD

Daily losses from the blockade ran at about $18M

The Egyptian government's five-day block of Internet services cost the national economy at least $90 million, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday.


The Paris-based organization said telecommunications and Internet services account for between 3% and 4% of Egypt's GDP, so the daily loss amounted to around $18 million.

The Internet block was lifted on Wednesday, but it might be much longer before the true cost of the government's action on the economy is known.

By cutting telecommunications links, the government severed links between domestic and international high-tech firms and the rest of the world. As a result, the OECD warned, Egypt could find it "much more difficult in the future to attract foreign companies and assure them that the networks will remain reliable."
Egypt's major Internet service providers stopped routing traffic just after midnight local time on Friday as protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak gathered momentum in Cairo.


In minutes, the amount of Internet traffic flowing between Egypt and the rest of the world was reduced to a trickle, according to monitoring by Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks.

"We have never seen a country as connected as Egypt completely lose Internet connectivity for such an extended period," said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, on the company's security blog.

"Unlike periods as recent as a decade ago, governments of technically developed countries cannot disrupt telecommunication without incurring significant economic cost and social / political pressures," he said.

Government seeks no-cost ideas for universal 2Mbps broadband

The government is to hold a open day on 15 July in London to hear ideas from industry about how to provide and pay for a minimum 2Mbps broadband service to the UK's "not spots", and how to roll a "superfast" broad service at the same time, according to a notice in the Official Journal of the EU.

The government confirmed two goals: to introduce a universal service commitment of a minimum broadband access speed of 2Mbps by 2012, and to avoid a "digital divide" by rolling out "superfast" broadband in remote areas at the same time as more densely populated urban areas received it.

The new Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), part of the Department for Business, Innovation & Research (BIS), will assess the ideas.
Pilot projects

BDUK will conduct a "worked example" exercise to understand different solutions including a mix of technologies and a mix of incumbent, new and public sector networks to the universal service commitment problem, and opportunities for superfast broadband connectivity in different geographies.

Suppliers will be invited to take part in a paper-based exercise at the event and to propose value for money and commercially sustainable universal service commitment and superfast broadband solutions in three "real world" examples.

"BDUK will be seeking complete and integrated responses which will require collaboration and partnering between multiple technology suppliers to demonstrate that together they could deliver commercial ISP services to all premises in the chosen geographies," the government said.

The group will also implement pilot projects to test the proposals in terms of delivering high speed connectivity, high quality data transport, and affordable pricing.

Pilot projects
"BDUK anticipates that a regional approach will be appropriate for the planning and deployment of superfast broadband, and will test and refine a re-usable approach in a pilot region, before implementing it in other regions across the UK," the government said.

No licence to print money
BIS said proposals would have to minimise the public sector investment required and limit the potential to distort competition.

Competitions for subsequent funding, subsidies and other incentives would be by open tender basis and may involve different phases and/or lots, it said.

"Suppliers will be encouraged to reuse existing infrastructure (including incumbent and public sector networks) wherever possible, and third party access to new subsidised infrastructures and contractual clawback mechanisms to avoid over-compensation will be required to ensure compatibility with state aid rules," it warned. The government would also require guarantees of completion.

What so ever, its all nightmare to the countrymen of Nepal. "Enjoy U.K."
chaos.