Egypt Counts Cost of Protests, Internet Down-Time
The Egyptian government’s blocking of Internet services for five days in a bid to undermine coordination of the protests against President Hosni Mubarak is likely to have cost the country 90 million dollars, according to preliminary estimates by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on 3 February.
The government ordered most internet service providers (ISPs) to suspend services on Friday 28 January, and access was only partially restored on Wednesday 2 February. During the shut-off only a tiny number of users in Egypt were able to access the net, some by using expensive satellite services.
More than 17 million Egyptians use the Internet, over 20% of the population, according to Internet World Stats data from February 2010. Other estimates, adding new users in the last year, put the figure as high as 23 million. About 4 million Egyptians have Facebook accounts.
The blocked telecommunications and Internet services account for roughly 3-4% of GDP, or a loss of 18 million dollars per day, the OECD said.
The Internet shut-off was not total, as the authorities allowed the small ISP Noor to operate until Monday 31 January. Noor's high-profile clients include the Egyptian Stock Exchange, the Commercial International Bank of Egypt, the National Bank of Egypt and Egypt Air.
The OECD warned that the long-term impact of totally blocking the Internet could be greater, as Egypt found it more difficult in the future to attract investment from international high-tech firms and assure them that the networks would remain reliable.
The continuing political crisis is also having an economic impact on Egyptian banks.
U.S. ratings agency Moody's on Wednesday 3 February downgraded the ratings of five Egyptian banks, which could reduce their ability to borrow money. The move followed the agency's lowering of the government's debt rating on 31 January.
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