Data from the Organisation for Economic Development indicates that Egypt’s Internet shutdown may have cost the country $90 million or more, PC Magazine reports. That could be low, as the country has done much to attract high-tech to the country, and those losses are not included.
Tag Archives | Egypt
US Cable Companies: Still No Plans to Carry Al Jazeera English
If you haven’t been watching Al Jazeera yet and are following the continuing unrest in Egypt, you should give it a try. The network has arguably done the best job at covering all angles of the crisis, and its commanding presence in the Middle East has given it a leg up on other outlets.
Watching it myself, it feels very BBC: news presented in a intellectually stimulating manner, something often missing in American television journalism today.
The network reports that traffic to its English-language site since the start of the crisis has surged by 2,500%, with 60% of that traffic coming from the US. Many are apparently tuning into the live stream.
Why’s this? Simply put, cable companies have practically all but shut out the network since its debut in 2006. Al Jazeera no doubt got a rap for being a outlet for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda — the terrorist group sent its videos regularly as “exclusives” in the days after 9/11 — but since then the network has done a lot to polish its image as a legitimate news outlet.
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Once Again, Tweets From Egypt
Google (and SayNow, which it just acquired) and Twitter have a clever and gutsy response to the Egyptian government’s Internet shutoff: a service that lets anyone tweet (and follow tweets) using a telephone. You can listen to tweets from Egypt here; it’s a fascinating, moving experience even if you can’t understand them. (Here’s one in English.)
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The Situation in Egypt, Told in Graph Form
Akamai has released a revealing–but not surprising–chart showing what’s happened to Internet traffic in Egypt.
