Egypt Internet Disruption is a Sign of Progress

Posted by: Stanley Reed on February 08

Egypt and other parts of the Middle East as well as India have been hit by internet outages that have been blamed on ships’ damaging undersea cables—though there are lots of conspiracy theories out there. Egyptian friends tell me they were completely without internet access earlier but now have it restored—though at lower speed. Its “scary when a whole country is locked out of the internet for days,” an Egyptian lady texted me the other day.

It may seem strange, but for me the angst over the internet outage was a sign of how far Egypt has come over the last couple of decades.

When I lived in Cairo in the late 1970s,having a telephone was a luxury and far from a sure thing. Even if you had one, that didn't mean it worked. Often there was no dial tone. You would leave the phone off the hook and wait, sometimes for several minutes, until it clicked on. On the rare occasions when it rained, the network went down as water soaked the cables under the streets.

Now, thanks in part to englightened government policies, Egypt is a telecom leader and even exports communications savvy to other parts of the world, including Iraq. Cairo may be fly-blown and shabby, but at least you can pay your bills by internet--unless someone is offshore cutting the cables.