Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
Shutting down the Internet cost India $ 2.8 billion, placing the South Asian country at the top of a list of 21 countries that restricted citizens’ access to the web in 2020.
India – the second nation hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of confirmed infections in general – was responsible for about three quarters of the $ 4 billion lost worldwide to Internet restrictions. Its losses more than doubled compared to 2019, showed a report by a UK digital privacy and security research group.
Some countries known to limit access to the Internet or censor material, such as China and North Korea, were not included in the report because researchers relied on publicly available open source information and documented Internet and social media closures.
With 8,927 hours of blocked or limited bandwidth access, India has restricted Internet use more than any other country, as the restrictions originally imposed in 2019 continued throughout 2020, according to the Global Shutdown Cost of Internet report released by Top10VPN.
Blackout costs
Bandwidth restrictions in Kashmir – where the government in 2019 revoked the special autonomous status of the country’s only Muslim-majority state – affected access to medicines, businesses and schools, despite the flexible seven-month period. close in March, it said.
India’s information and technology ministry did not respond to an email requesting a response to the report’s findings.
The cost of internet blackouts was calculated using group indicators, including the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union and Software Freedom Law Center, based in Delhi. Include social media shutdowns in your calculations.
Belarus suffered most economically after India, with $ 336.4 million lost in 218 hours of blackouts and curbs that affected 7.9 million people, amid protests after a controversial presidential election. During the period of restrictions, the report documented a 650% increase in demand for virtual private networks in Belarus, the report said.
Myanmar imposed blackouts and limited bandwidth to 5,160 hours in 2020 amid continuing restrictions in the Chin and Rakhine regions, the report said. Yemen lost $ 237 million to 912 hours of Internet outages.
With 27,165 hours, the main internet outages recorded worldwide in 2020 were 49% higher compared to the previous year and affected 268 million people, according to the report. About 42% of the strikes were associated with additional human rights abuses, including restrictions on freedom of assembly, electoral interference and infringements of press freedom, the report said.