Today at about 4:30 am EST (11:30 am in Egypt), Egypt restored its internet access including access to important social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which were blocked to stop the organization of protests. The internet had been down for almost six days prior to this morning. The shutdown was very abrupt, and took place in the afternoon on January 27.
As most of us know, the shutdown did little to stop the organization of protesters, who have been going strong and growing in numbers since January 25. Last night, Mubarek finally stated that he does intend to leave office, but not until after the presidential election in September. This has done little to satisfy the protesters, most of who are calling for his immediate departure. Sources indicated that the same groups who organized last week’s “Friday of Anger” have given Mubarek a deadline of Friday, February 4. They are calling this the “Day of Departure,” and have begun to organize a protest in front of the presidential Heliopolis Palace.
Sources in Egypt say that the internet seems to be fully restored with no blocks or restrictions as of yet. During the shutdown, many “hacktivists” came up with creative ways to get around the blockage, using the Tor Anonymity network, fax machines at universities, smartphones as modems, and even amateur radio systems. Yesterday, Google and Twitter teamed to launch “Speak-to-Tweet,” which allowed users to call an international number and leave a voicemail that would be sent out over Twitter with a hashtag of the state it came from.
Phone service has also been greatly affected, as Vodafone and France Telecom reported that they were told to shut down on Friday, January 28. Service has since been restored, but many lines are still out of service, and the blackouts have caused a mess which will take a while to fully recover from. StanaCard hopes for our customer’s sake that service will soon be fully restored, as we know that many of you are eager to talk to friends and family in Egypt.
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