Tag / Gambia

by davidbelson

Internet Disruption Report: May 2020

Another entry from the better late than never department…

The conclusion of last month’s post noted “There was a noticeable absence of government-directed Internet disruptions in April. That is not to say that there were none, but those that did occur were not significant enough to be observed through publicly available tools.” This trend, which had also been observed over the prior few months, continued into May. (Unfortunately, this is not the case for June, but that will be covered in next month’s post.)

In May, a power outage in Venezuela once again disrupted Internet connectivity across the country, and a cyclone impacted connectivity in Bhutan. Fiber and submarine cable cuts (and repairs) caused Internet disruptions across multiple countries, as did unspecified network issues.

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by davidbelson

Internet Disruption Report: January 2020

January 2020 brought the start of both a new year and a new decade, not to mention the continued deployment of satellite constellations that will be used to provide broadband Internet connectivity around the world. While space-based Internet connectivity holds promise for the future, Internet connectivity delivered through terrestrial and submarine infrastructure saw its fair share of problems throughout the month. In January, Internet disruptions caused by earthquakes, power outages, network maintenance, government direction, and cable cuts were observed.

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by davidbelson

Internet Disruption Report: November 2019

In November, many of us in the United States think about the Internet in terms of having to fix the connectivity problems at a relative’s house while visiting them for Thanksgiving, or using it to escape from those same relatives for a few minutes by browsing social media or watching a video. However, across the rest of the world, the connectivity problems seen in November weren’t the kind a quick router reboot would solve. Blackouts caused Internet disruptions in Curaçao and Venezuela, fiber/cable issues caused problems in Haiti, Venezuela, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia, and routing issues disrupted connectivity in Indonesia and Ecuador. However, the most significant Internet disruptions in November were week-long government directed shutdowns in Iraq and Iran.

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by davidbelson

Internet Disruption Report: July 2019

After a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month in June, the number and severity of significant Internet disruptions observed in July was markedly lower. The month was book-ended by exam-related outages, while other observed connectivity disruptions were related to a massive power outage, severe weather, government direction, and fiber/cable issues. Several additional unattributed disruptions were also seen over the course of the month.

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