From the Egyptian Stock Exchange to the Commercial International Bank of Egypt, Egyptian Internet providers are back online. All the major Egyptian ISPs appear to have readvertised routes to domestic customer networks in the global routing table, Renesys reports.
With that, Facebook and Twitter are also available once again inside Egypt. Renesys reports that no traffic blocks are in place, DNS answers are clean, and IP addresses match — at least for now.
But does Egypt’s pulling the plug on the Internet matter for the country, its citizens, or its ruling elite? As the final ISP serving Egypt went dark on Monday, the greater implications of the Mubarak government’s decision began to become apparent, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
What Happens Next?
“Yes, those pesky social-networking sites were no longer readily available to protesters. But disabling the Internet also effectively hobbled public-sector offices and agencies, and closed down the Egyptian Stock Exchange, commercial banks, and the country’s credit-rating bureau, Iscore,” King said. “By shutting down the business of the Internet, Egypt also effectively put itself out of business. Less than 24 hours later, markets responded by lowering the country’s credit rating and warning of further severe financial consequences.”
How did demonstrators respond? With a fine bit of fancy footwork in utilizing whatever means they could to stay connected and share information, including old-school faxes and ham radios, and even simple word of mouth, King noted. As a result, he continued, Egypt’s rulers discovered what many businesses already have — that there are huge benefits to be gained from highly collaborative, noncentralized management models and flexible communications tools.
So what happens next? That’s hard to say. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will not seek another term in office, but the Egyptian people seem disinclined to accept Mubarak’s wish to participate in the transfer…