After declining in the years of the pandemic, the data from the world report of Access Now They register a new increase in Internet outages around the world, increasingly prolonged and directed at specific populations. Iran, Burma and Bangladesh are other countries where this phenomenon has been most recorded. In India it is an option that is given “for security reasons” to the officials of the Ministries of the Interior of Delhi and of the different States.
New Delhi () – During 2022, India imposed up to 84 internet shutdowns, confirming itself for the fifth consecutive year at the top of the list of nations that have ordered the closure of the network. This according to data from the new edition of the #KeepItOn campaign report produced by the global coalition Access Now.
According to the report, in 2022 alone, governments and other actors around the world cut off the internet at least 187 times in 35 countries, the highest number of nations recorded since the first edition was published in 2016. Outages are not only increasing again after of a decline at the height of the pandemic, but last longer, target specific populations, and run when people most need a connection, including during humanitarian crises, mass protests, and conflict. Behind the 22 outages in India and Ukraine (in this case related to actions by external forces in the ongoing conflict), the countries where the network has been disconnected the most times are Iran (18), Burma (7) and Bangladesh (6 ).
In the specific case of India, the Internet was disconnected 49 times in Jammu and Kashmir in 2022, the highest number of all the states in the country. Among them, a series of 16 shutdown orders for three consecutive days took place between January and February 2022. The Rajasthan authorities imposed shutdowns on 12 separate occasions, followed by those in West Bengal, which ordered shutdowns seven times.
From 2016 to date, 58% of all documented network outages in the world occurred in India. Currently, in the country the matter is governed by the 2017 regulations on the temporary suspension of telecommunications services due to “public emergency or security”. The rules directly empower senior Interior Ministry officials at the central and state levels to order cuts.
“India cut off the internet more than any other country – 84 attacks on fundamental rights in the world’s largest democracy,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international consultant and Asia-Pacific policy director at Access Now.
However, something is progressing in this regard: for the first time, the total number of power outages in India fell below 100. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technologies itself expressed concern at the beginning of the month about the phenomenon and denounced the Department of Telecommunications for not keeping a record of the incidents or taking action on many reports.
Telecom operators also raised the issue of damages due to business interruption caused by the outages. “People migrate to other services during outages. You need a fixed income model to make up for these losses,” he told The Indian Express SP Kochhar, CEO of the Indian Mobile Phone Operators Association, which represents the three telecommunications companies in the country.
