Internet in Egypt
Encyclopedia
The Internet in Egypt is built upon a modern infrastructure, including widespread broadband Internet access
via ADSL. Internet freedom in Mubarak's
Egypt was rated as only "partly free" by international watchdog Freedom House
. It remains to be seen how this will change in the post-Mubarak era.
As part of the Egyptian government’s ambitious program to expand access to ICT, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), Egyptian National Post Organization (ENPO) and Computer and Software Department at the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce signed an agreement to spread personal computers for every home in August 2008. The agreement is the second phase of a 2002 initiative and is part of the MCIT’s strategy of increasing ICT use throughout Egypt, focusing on socio-economically disadvantaged communities. The initiative includes offering discounts on computers and 512 kbps ADSL subscriptions for three years.
Telecommunications companies also work to enable users to access Internet content. For example, Egypt’s Vodafone, which has 15 million subscribers, announced in August 2008 that it will buy a majority share in Sarmady Communications (Sarcom), an online and mobile content provider. The move was widely seen as part of a wider strategy to dominate Egypt’s Internet market by providing both Internet service and content to customers.
Telecom Egypt, which has a monopoly in the fixed-line telephone sector, owns a 45 percent stake in Vodafone Egypt and had 11.3 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of June 2008. Telecom Egypt leases parts of its network to other Egyptian mobile operators, who use it to provide calls between mobile to fixed-line phones, as well as international calls. In 2008 the government announced it would sell a second fixed-line license, ending Telecom Egypt's monopoly, but plans to do so have repeatedly been delayed.
Almost a million Egyptian households have access to broadband, thanks to sharing of ADSL lines. Of these, 63.4 percent share the connection with their neighbors; 81.9 percent of households that share lines share them with more than three other households. Egypt had more than 400,000 ADSL lines by the end of 2007, 75 percent of which are residential. More than one fourth of Egyptian Internet users visit Internet cafés to get online.
The number of blogs in Egypt has risen from just 40 in 2004 to an estimated 160,000 in July 2008, according to a report released by the Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). More than three fourths of Egyptian bloggers write in Arabic only, 20 percent write in both Arabic and English, and nearly 10 percent write in English only. More than 30 percent of Arabic-language blogs are Egyptian. Most Egyptian bloggers are young men in their 20s, while just over one fourth are female. More than half of Egyptian bloggers are between the ages of 20 and 30.
in 2000 as ADSL. The service was offered in select central offices in big cities such as Cairo
and Alexandria
and gradually spread to cover more Governorates of Egypt
. There are numerous (220 according to regulatory authority numbers) Internet service provider
s (ISPs) in Egypt offering an ADSL service. Four companies own the infrastructure and they are called class A ISPs: (Egynet, LINKdotNET
, TE Data, and NOL). Etisalat Egypt
has bought both NileOnline and Egynet to expand their Internet presence. They sell to class B ISPs (8 major companies) which, in turn, sell to the rest of the 208 ISPs.
Broadband connections in Egypt vary in quality. The quality depends on the distance from the central loop office, the presence of the ISP in that local loop, and the quality of the copper telephone line on which the broadband connection is carried. Internationally, Egypt is currently served with three international submarine cables. namely, FLAG
, SEA-ME-WE 3 and SEA-ME-WE 4. but after the mass information blackout of early 2008, with the announcement of Telecom Egypt owned cable TEnorth and Orascom telecom owned MENA. several other projects are planned to improve the resilience of the international broadband.
The estimated number of subscribers is 100,000 according to a statement by Egypt's Communication and Information Technology Minister, Dr. Tarek Kamel
, in Ahram
newspaper on Sunday 5 March 2006. In November 2008, the CEO of Link.net announced in an interview with a local newspaper that the number of ADSL subscribers is 600 000. According to NTRA the number of DSL subscribers in Egypt is 1,027,488.
s: Cairo Regional Internet Exchange
(CR-IX) and Middle East Internet Exchange
(MEIX), the former carrying international, as well as domestic, services. Reports related to the 2011 Internet shutdown in Egypt refer to the "Ramses Exchange
" as the location where the shut down was effected. The Ramses Exchange, located on Ramses Street near the center of Cairo is the main "wire center" for Telecom Egypt, carrying not only municipal telecommunications traffic, but also serving as the main point of entry for international submarine fiber-optic circuits, back-hauled from landing stations near Alexandria. The Ramses Exchange is also the location of the CR-IX, the largest Internet exchange in North Africa or the Middle East.
at a starting price of 45 LE (Egyptian pound
s) for the 256k/64k and a 2GB limit for the download and so on. Due to the widespread use of local line sharing that limited ISPs' subscribers and increased the burden of traffic upon the network. However, almost all the ADSL users, especially the students and users of unlimited ADSL, refused the offer. Most users had come to the conclusion that, if this plan were to be imposed, they would cancel their subscriptions because they wanted the Internet to be unlimited as is.
The plan was to start the limited ADSL Packages on the 1st of September 2007. It turned out that Dr. Tarek Kamel was to aim specific offerings at different price ranges for different individuals unable to subscribe to an unlimited package. As such, the unlimited packages remained as is, and available through all major ISPs with no changes in price, while the limited ADSL price ranges are now offered at a discounted price. with the existing unlimited policies with no fair usage policy except for ADSL2+
endlessly and send up to 2 million e-mail
s a month. Most users are divided upon this capping especially those who are heavy P2P
users. Going above the monthly quota would result in throttling speed of 64kbit/s for the rest of the month.
was affected by a breakage of the two marine cables FLAG
& SMW4 connecting Egypt to the world.
TE Data users were not totally disconnected from the Internet, as the company had a third international gateway to the Internet
, SMW3. However, they suffered from reduced bandwidth
until the issue was resolved.
The local National Telecom Authority has issued a decision for all ISPs to offer a free of charge month to all clients as a compensation for the reduced quality of service during the outage.
, his regime kept watch on the most critical bloggers and regularly arrested them. The success of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
offers a chance to establish greater freedom of expression in Egypt, especially online. However, the success in this effort is not certain. Reflecting these dramatic changes and opportunities in Egypt, in March 2011 Reporters Without Borders
moved Egypt from its "Internet Enemies" list to its countries "under surveillance" list.
Using data and information gathered during 2010, the status of Internet freedom in Egypt was classified as "Partly Free" in Freedom on the Net 2011 by Freedom House
.
In August 2009 the OpenNet Initiative
reported finding no evidence of Internet filtering
in Egypt in any of the four areas it monitors (political, social, conflict/security, and Internet tools).
A number of Egyptian ISPs offer optional filters to block pornography
; TE Data offers Internet services with content controls which eliminate “all of the Internet’s indecent content that might affect your children”.
In 2005 Egyptian authorities continued to both encourage and place restrictions on the use of the Internet. For example, in February, Egypt’s Ministry of Interior ordered Internet café
managers and owners to record their customers’ names and ID numbers and threatened to close the cafés if they refused to comply. This action was condemned by the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, which described it as “a gross violation to the right to privacy”. In August 2008, authorities increased the level of surveillance by demanding that Internet café customers provide their names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers in order to receive a text message on their cell phones containing a PIN that they can use to access the Internet.
As the Egyptian blogosphere
continued to grow, so did the government’s crackdown on bloggers and Internet users. For example, blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman Amer (“Kareem Amer”) was sentenced in February 2007 to four years in prison for “incitement to hatred of Islam” on his blog and for insulting the president. He has since become the symbol of online repression for the country’s bloggers. Other Egyptian bloggers have also been arrested for their online activities, and some have been sentenced to prison. One example is Mohamed Refaat, editor of the blog Matabbat (matabbat.blogspot.com), who was arrested in August 2008 under the state emergency law. He was charged with “offending the state institutions, destabilizing public security, and inciting others to demonstrate and strike via the Internet”.
In a landmark 2007 legal case, an administrative court rejected a lawsuit brought by a judge calling for the banning of 49 Web sites in Egypt. The court emphasized the support for freedom of expression as long as such Web sites do not harm the beliefs or public order. However, in May 2009, a Cairo court ruled that the Egyptian government must ban access to pornographic Web sites, because they are deemed offensive to religion and society’s values. The suit was filed by a lawyer who pointed to an Egyptian man and his wife who were sentenced to prison for starting a swingers club via the Internet as an example of “the dangers posed by such offensive Web sites”. It remains to be seen whether the authorities will enforce this court order.
Egypt has witnessed an increase in the use of Facebook
for social activism, which alerted the government to the potential force of the site. As a result, there were rumors that it might be blocked, especially after a group of activists managed to recruit supporters using Facebook for the 2008 Egyptian general strike
protesting against rising food prices and President Hosni Mubarak’s government.
On 28 March 2011, military officers arrested the 25-year-old blogger, Maikel Nabil, at his home in Cairo. The military prosecutor charged him with "insulting the military establishment" and "spreading false information" for blogs that criticized the army's role during anti-government protests. On 10 April a military court sentenced Nabil to three years in prison, in what Human Rights Watch
called a serious setback to freedom of expression in post-Mubarak Egypt. Not only was the sentence severe, but it was imposed on a civilian by a military tribunal after an unfair trial.
in Egypt
and later Facebook
was blocked as well.
On January 27, various reports claimed that access to the Internet in the entire country had been shut down. The authorities responsible achieved this by shutting down the country's official Domain Name System
, in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests. Later reports stated that almost all BGP announcements out of the country had been withdrawn, almost completely disconnecting the country from the global Internet, with only a single major provider, Noor Data Networks, remained up. And while Noor continued to operate for several days, its routes started to be withdrawn at 20:46 UTC on 31 January.
It was later reported that the five major Egyptian service providers—Telecom Egypt
, Vodafone
/Raya, Link Egypt, Etisalat Misr
, and Internet Egypt—all went dark one after the other between 22:12 and 22:25 UTC (12:12–12:25 a.m. Friday 28 January Cairo time). As a result, approximately 93% of all Egyptian networks were unreachable by late afternoon. The shutdown happened within the space of a few tens of minutes, not instantaneously, which was interpreted as companies receiving phone calls one at a time, ordering them to shut down access, rather than an automated system taking all providers down at once.
Analysis by BGPMon showed that only 26 BGP routes of the 2903 registered routes to Egyptian networks remained active after the blackout was first noticed; thus an estimated 88% of the whole Egyptian network was disconnected. RIPE NCC
has two graphs of routing activity from Egypt, announcements/withdrawals and available prefixes, including a snapshot of activity during the shutdown.
Shortly after the Internet shutdown, engineers at Google
, Twitter
, and SayNow, a voice-messaging startup company acquired by Google in January, announced the Speak To Tweet
service. Google stated in its official blog that the goal of the service was to assist Egyptian protesters in staying connected during the Internet shutdown. Users could phone in a tweet by leaving a voicemail and use the Twitter hashtag #egypt. These tweets can be accessed without an Internet connection by dialing the same designated phone numbers. Those with Internet access can listen to the tweets by visiting twitter.com/speak2tweet.
Internet service providers such as the French Data Network (FDN) provided free (zero-cost) dial-up access to Egyptians with landline (analogue) international telephone access. FDN provided the service as a matter of principle, to "contribute to the freedom of expression of the Egyptian people and allow them to keep a connection with the rest of the world."
After the shutdown of the Internet in Egypt, the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama
, released the following statement calling for an end to the Internet ban:
On February 2, connectivity was re-established by the four main Egyptian service providers. A week later, the heavy filtering that occurred at the height of the revolution had ended and bloggers and online activists who had been arrested were released.
Broadband Internet access
Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just "broadband", is a high data rate, low-latency connection to the Internet— typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56 kbit/s modem or satellite Internet with inherently high latency....
via ADSL. Internet freedom in Mubarak's
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....
Egypt was rated as only "partly free" by international watchdog Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
. It remains to be seen how this will change in the post-Mubarak era.
Penetration and usage
Egypt's Internet penetration rate grew from less than one percent in 2000, to 5% in 2004, and to 24% in 2009. This ranks Egypt 110th out of 203 countries, slightly ahead of its neighbors Lebanon (24%) and Syria (20%) and slightly behind Jordan (26%). The international bandwidth and VoIP Internet markets have been liberalized. More than 200 Internet and data service providers operate in Egypt, making its ADSL services among the cheapest in Africa. As the information and communications technology (ICT) sector continues to grow, Egypt’s spending on ICT reached $9.8 billion in 2008 and is expected to increase to $13.5 billion by 2011.As part of the Egyptian government’s ambitious program to expand access to ICT, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), Egyptian National Post Organization (ENPO) and Computer and Software Department at the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce signed an agreement to spread personal computers for every home in August 2008. The agreement is the second phase of a 2002 initiative and is part of the MCIT’s strategy of increasing ICT use throughout Egypt, focusing on socio-economically disadvantaged communities. The initiative includes offering discounts on computers and 512 kbps ADSL subscriptions for three years.
Telecommunications companies also work to enable users to access Internet content. For example, Egypt’s Vodafone, which has 15 million subscribers, announced in August 2008 that it will buy a majority share in Sarmady Communications (Sarcom), an online and mobile content provider. The move was widely seen as part of a wider strategy to dominate Egypt’s Internet market by providing both Internet service and content to customers.
Telecom Egypt, which has a monopoly in the fixed-line telephone sector, owns a 45 percent stake in Vodafone Egypt and had 11.3 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of June 2008. Telecom Egypt leases parts of its network to other Egyptian mobile operators, who use it to provide calls between mobile to fixed-line phones, as well as international calls. In 2008 the government announced it would sell a second fixed-line license, ending Telecom Egypt's monopoly, but plans to do so have repeatedly been delayed.
Almost a million Egyptian households have access to broadband, thanks to sharing of ADSL lines. Of these, 63.4 percent share the connection with their neighbors; 81.9 percent of households that share lines share them with more than three other households. Egypt had more than 400,000 ADSL lines by the end of 2007, 75 percent of which are residential. More than one fourth of Egyptian Internet users visit Internet cafés to get online.
The number of blogs in Egypt has risen from just 40 in 2004 to an estimated 160,000 in July 2008, according to a report released by the Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). More than three fourths of Egyptian bloggers write in Arabic only, 20 percent write in both Arabic and English, and nearly 10 percent write in English only. More than 30 percent of Arabic-language blogs are Egyptian. Most Egyptian bloggers are young men in their 20s, while just over one fourth are female. More than half of Egyptian bloggers are between the ages of 20 and 30.
Broadband access
Broadband Internet access was introduced commercially to EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in 2000 as ADSL. The service was offered in select central offices in big cities such as Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
and Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
and gradually spread to cover more Governorates of Egypt
Governorates of Egypt
Egypt is divided for administrative purposes into 27 governorates . Egyptian governorates are the top tier of the country's five-tier jurisdiction hierarchy. A governorate is administered by a governor, who is appointed by the President of Egypt and serves at the president's discretion...
. There are numerous (220 according to regulatory authority numbers) Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s (ISPs) in Egypt offering an ADSL service. Four companies own the infrastructure and they are called class A ISPs: (Egynet, LINKdotNET
LINKdotNET
LINKdotNET is an Egyptian ISP and internet company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding.Chairman of LINKdotNET is Khaled Bichara, who is now the CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding.-Beginnings:...
, TE Data, and NOL). Etisalat Egypt
Etisalat Egypt
Etisalat Egypt is a subsidiary of Etisalat U.A.E., the sole telecommunications services provider in the United Arab Emirates from 1976 until the arrival of Du in February 2007, and the first 3.5G network operator in Egypt. Etisalat Misr is one of 18 service providers managed by Etisalat in the...
has bought both NileOnline and Egynet to expand their Internet presence. They sell to class B ISPs (8 major companies) which, in turn, sell to the rest of the 208 ISPs.
Broadband connections in Egypt vary in quality. The quality depends on the distance from the central loop office, the presence of the ISP in that local loop, and the quality of the copper telephone line on which the broadband connection is carried. Internationally, Egypt is currently served with three international submarine cables. namely, FLAG
Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe
Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe is a 28,000-kilometer-long submarine communications cable containing optical fiber that connects the United Kingdom, Japan, and many places in between. The cable is operated by India's Flag Telecom, a fully owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications. The system...
, SEA-ME-WE 3 and SEA-ME-WE 4. but after the mass information blackout of early 2008, with the announcement of Telecom Egypt owned cable TEnorth and Orascom telecom owned MENA. several other projects are planned to improve the resilience of the international broadband.
The estimated number of subscribers is 100,000 according to a statement by Egypt's Communication and Information Technology Minister, Dr. Tarek Kamel
Tarek Kamel
Tarek Mohamed Kamel is an Egyptian academic and politician. He was the Minister of Communication and Information Technology in the cabinet of Dr. Ahmed Nazif from July 2004 to February 2011....
, in Ahram
Al-Ahram
Al-Ahram , founded in 1875, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after al-Waqa'i`al-Masriya . It is majority owned by the Egyptian government....
newspaper on Sunday 5 March 2006. In November 2008, the CEO of Link.net announced in an interview with a local newspaper that the number of ADSL subscribers is 600 000. According to NTRA the number of DSL subscribers in Egypt is 1,027,488.
Internet exchange points
Egypt has two Internet exchange pointInternet Exchange Point
An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...
s: Cairo Regional Internet Exchange
Cairo Regional Internet Exchange
The Cairo Regional Internet Exchange is an Internet Exchange Point which was formed in Cairo, Egypt by a joint venture between the National Telecom Company and its subsidiary ECC Solutions along with the Indian FLAG Telecom...
(CR-IX) and Middle East Internet Exchange
Middle East Internet Exchange
The Middle East Internet Exchange is a subsidiary of GPX Global Systems. The company was incorporated in August 2002 to develop and operate state-of-the-art, private, carrier neutral data centers in emerging commercial markets along the undersea cable systems of FLAG, SEA-ME-WE3, and...
(MEIX), the former carrying international, as well as domestic, services. Reports related to the 2011 Internet shutdown in Egypt refer to the "Ramses Exchange
Ramses Exchange
The Ramses Exchange is a telecoms building in central Cairo that is a focal point of the Internet in Egypt. It is situated at 26 Ramses Street....
" as the location where the shut down was effected. The Ramses Exchange, located on Ramses Street near the center of Cairo is the main "wire center" for Telecom Egypt, carrying not only municipal telecommunications traffic, but also serving as the main point of entry for international submarine fiber-optic circuits, back-hauled from landing stations near Alexandria. The Ramses Exchange is also the location of the CR-IX, the largest Internet exchange in North Africa or the Middle East.
Ministerial statement
The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dr. Tarek Kamel, said in the July 2007 news that the ADSL would be turned from Unlimited to Limited with a QuotaBandwidth cap
A bandwidth cap, also known as a bit cap, limits the transfer of a specified amount of data over a period of time. Internet service providers commonly apply a cap when a channel intended to be shared by many users becomes overloaded, or may be overloaded, by a few users...
at a starting price of 45 LE (Egyptian pound
Egyptian pound
The Egyptian Pound is the currency of Egypt. It is divided into 100 Qirsh , or 1,000 Milliemes ....
s) for the 256k/64k and a 2GB limit for the download and so on. Due to the widespread use of local line sharing that limited ISPs' subscribers and increased the burden of traffic upon the network. However, almost all the ADSL users, especially the students and users of unlimited ADSL, refused the offer. Most users had come to the conclusion that, if this plan were to be imposed, they would cancel their subscriptions because they wanted the Internet to be unlimited as is.
The plan was to start the limited ADSL Packages on the 1st of September 2007. It turned out that Dr. Tarek Kamel was to aim specific offerings at different price ranges for different individuals unable to subscribe to an unlimited package. As such, the unlimited packages remained as is, and available through all major ISPs with no changes in price, while the limited ADSL price ranges are now offered at a discounted price. with the existing unlimited policies with no fair usage policy except for ADSL2+
Introduction of ADSL2+
In April 2008, ADSL2+ was introduced in Egypt at speeds up to 24mbit. Now most ISPs have capped all the unlimited ADSL offerings to a quota of between 100GB and 150GB per month, calling it a Fair usage policy. All speeds from 256k/64k up to 24mbit are capped to up to 150GB per month. ISPs stated that the 150GB quota was huge and users could download up to 60 large movies, 10,000 large songs, browseWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
endlessly and send up to 2 million e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
s a month. Most users are divided upon this capping especially those who are heavy P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
users. Going above the monthly quota would result in throttling speed of 64kbit/s for the rest of the month.
Alternative offer
There is an alternative offer from 256k to 2mbit ranging from 2GB a month to 15GB a month as a fair usage coverage with reduced prices to encourage low range users to the uptake of broadband.Confusion about capping
Most ISPs, even though are capped to 100-150GB a month, still claim the offers as unlimited. Also, companies use vague and inconclusive responses about the Fair Usage Policy and its implementation of different packages. The ISP's websites got the FUP in English and placed in hard-to-navigate places plus most of the technical support and representatives are denying that any FUP is in place, which is felt by the end user to be in place, possibly in fear of customers canceling their subscriptions at the thought of being capped.Performance improvement
The service has improved dramatically as of late, in terms of performance, during the whole of 2007 till now due to the investment of all parties involved in the providing of Internet in infrastructure heavily. according to NTRA the total international bandwidth at the end of 2009 is 90458Mb and number of ports 970557. which is seeing a dramatic increase from the first quarter of 2009 of only 16,995 Mb.2008 marine cable damage
On 30 January 2008 the Internet service in Egypt and the Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
was affected by a breakage of the two marine cables FLAG
Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe
Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe is a 28,000-kilometer-long submarine communications cable containing optical fiber that connects the United Kingdom, Japan, and many places in between. The cable is operated by India's Flag Telecom, a fully owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications. The system...
& SMW4 connecting Egypt to the world.
TE Data users were not totally disconnected from the Internet, as the company had a third international gateway to the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, SMW3. However, they suffered from reduced bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
until the issue was resolved.
The local National Telecom Authority has issued a decision for all ISPs to offer a free of charge month to all clients as a compensation for the reduced quality of service during the outage.
Censorship
While the Internet in Egypt was not directly censored under the regime of President Hosni MubarakHosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....
, his regime kept watch on the most critical bloggers and regularly arrested them. The success of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
2011 Egyptian revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 and is still continuing as of November 2011. The uprising was mainly a campaign of non-violent civil resistance, which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil...
offers a chance to establish greater freedom of expression in Egypt, especially online. However, the success in this effort is not certain. Reflecting these dramatic changes and opportunities in Egypt, in March 2011 Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
moved Egypt from its "Internet Enemies" list to its countries "under surveillance" list.
Using data and information gathered during 2010, the status of Internet freedom in Egypt was classified as "Partly Free" in Freedom on the Net 2011 by Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
.
In August 2009 the OpenNet Initiative
OpenNet Initiative
The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run...
reported finding no evidence of Internet filtering
Internet censorship
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
in Egypt in any of the four areas it monitors (political, social, conflict/security, and Internet tools).
A number of Egyptian ISPs offer optional filters to block pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
; TE Data offers Internet services with content controls which eliminate “all of the Internet’s indecent content that might affect your children”.
In 2005 Egyptian authorities continued to both encourage and place restrictions on the use of the Internet. For example, in February, Egypt’s Ministry of Interior ordered Internet café
Internet cafe
An Internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name...
managers and owners to record their customers’ names and ID numbers and threatened to close the cafés if they refused to comply. This action was condemned by the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, which described it as “a gross violation to the right to privacy”. In August 2008, authorities increased the level of surveillance by demanding that Internet café customers provide their names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers in order to receive a text message on their cell phones containing a PIN that they can use to access the Internet.
As the Egyptian blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
continued to grow, so did the government’s crackdown on bloggers and Internet users. For example, blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman Amer (“Kareem Amer”) was sentenced in February 2007 to four years in prison for “incitement to hatred of Islam” on his blog and for insulting the president. He has since become the symbol of online repression for the country’s bloggers. Other Egyptian bloggers have also been arrested for their online activities, and some have been sentenced to prison. One example is Mohamed Refaat, editor of the blog Matabbat (matabbat.blogspot.com), who was arrested in August 2008 under the state emergency law. He was charged with “offending the state institutions, destabilizing public security, and inciting others to demonstrate and strike via the Internet”.
In a landmark 2007 legal case, an administrative court rejected a lawsuit brought by a judge calling for the banning of 49 Web sites in Egypt. The court emphasized the support for freedom of expression as long as such Web sites do not harm the beliefs or public order. However, in May 2009, a Cairo court ruled that the Egyptian government must ban access to pornographic Web sites, because they are deemed offensive to religion and society’s values. The suit was filed by a lawyer who pointed to an Egyptian man and his wife who were sentenced to prison for starting a swingers club via the Internet as an example of “the dangers posed by such offensive Web sites”. It remains to be seen whether the authorities will enforce this court order.
Egypt has witnessed an increase in the use of Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
for social activism, which alerted the government to the potential force of the site. As a result, there were rumors that it might be blocked, especially after a group of activists managed to recruit supporters using Facebook for the 2008 Egyptian general strike
2008 Egyptian general strike
The 2008 Egyptian general strike was a strike which occurred on 6 April 2008, by Egyptian workers, primarily in the state-run textile industry, in response to low wages and rising food costs. Strikes are illegal in Egypt and authorities have been given orders to break demonstrations forcefully in...
protesting against rising food prices and President Hosni Mubarak’s government.
On 28 March 2011, military officers arrested the 25-year-old blogger, Maikel Nabil, at his home in Cairo. The military prosecutor charged him with "insulting the military establishment" and "spreading false information" for blogs that criticized the army's role during anti-government protests. On 10 April a military court sentenced Nabil to three years in prison, in what Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
called a serious setback to freedom of expression in post-Mubarak Egypt. Not only was the sentence severe, but it was imposed on a civilian by a military tribunal after an unfair trial.
2011 Internet shutdown
The 2011 Egyptian protests began on 25 January 2011. As a result, on January 25 and 26, the government blocked TwitterTwitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and later Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
was blocked as well.
On January 27, various reports claimed that access to the Internet in the entire country had been shut down. The authorities responsible achieved this by shutting down the country's official Domain Name System
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
, in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests. Later reports stated that almost all BGP announcements out of the country had been withdrawn, almost completely disconnecting the country from the global Internet, with only a single major provider, Noor Data Networks, remained up. And while Noor continued to operate for several days, its routes started to be withdrawn at 20:46 UTC on 31 January.
It was later reported that the five major Egyptian service providers—Telecom Egypt
Telecom Egypt
Telecom Egypt or Telecom Egypt SAE , is Egypt’s main Telephone company. It started in 1854 with the first telegraph line in Egypt...
, Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
/Raya, Link Egypt, Etisalat Misr
Etisalat
Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, branded trade name Etisalat is a UAE based telecommunications services provider, currently operating in 18 countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa...
, and Internet Egypt—all went dark one after the other between 22:12 and 22:25 UTC (12:12–12:25 a.m. Friday 28 January Cairo time). As a result, approximately 93% of all Egyptian networks were unreachable by late afternoon. The shutdown happened within the space of a few tens of minutes, not instantaneously, which was interpreted as companies receiving phone calls one at a time, ordering them to shut down access, rather than an automated system taking all providers down at once.
Analysis by BGPMon showed that only 26 BGP routes of the 2903 registered routes to Egyptian networks remained active after the blackout was first noticed; thus an estimated 88% of the whole Egyptian network was disconnected. RIPE NCC
RIPE NCC
The Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre is the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia...
has two graphs of routing activity from Egypt, announcements/withdrawals and available prefixes, including a snapshot of activity during the shutdown.
Shortly after the Internet shutdown, engineers at Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, and SayNow, a voice-messaging startup company acquired by Google in January, announced the Speak To Tweet
Speak To Tweet
Speak To Tweet or speak2tweet is a communications service which allows users to leave a tweet on Twitter by calling a designated international phone number and leaving a voice message...
service. Google stated in its official blog that the goal of the service was to assist Egyptian protesters in staying connected during the Internet shutdown. Users could phone in a tweet by leaving a voicemail and use the Twitter hashtag #egypt. These tweets can be accessed without an Internet connection by dialing the same designated phone numbers. Those with Internet access can listen to the tweets by visiting twitter.com/speak2tweet.
Internet service providers such as the French Data Network (FDN) provided free (zero-cost) dial-up access to Egyptians with landline (analogue) international telephone access. FDN provided the service as a matter of principle, to "contribute to the freedom of expression of the Egyptian people and allow them to keep a connection with the rest of the world."
After the shutdown of the Internet in Egypt, the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, released the following statement calling for an end to the Internet ban:
The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights and the United States will stand up for them everywhere. I also call upon the Egyptian government to reverse the actions that they've taken to interfere with access to the internet, to cellphone service and to social networks that do so much to connect people in the 21st century.
On February 2, connectivity was re-established by the four main Egyptian service providers. A week later, the heavy filtering that occurred at the height of the revolution had ended and bloggers and online activists who had been arrested were released.