Egypt didn’t want to get offline without Internet
Egypt: Egyptians find the way to stay connected with the outside world. “When countries block, we evolve,” an activist with the group We Rebuild wrote in a Twitter message Friday.
As groups like We Rebuild scramble to keep the country connected to the outside world, turning to landline telephones, fax machines and even ham radio to keep information flowing in and out of the country.
Although one Internet service provider — Noor Group — remains in operation, Egypt’s government abruptly ordered the rest of the country’s ISPs to shut down their services just after midnight local time Thursday. Mobile networks have also been turned off in some areas. The blackout appears designed to disrupt organization of the country’s growing protest movement, which is calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Jillian York, a researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said via e-mail, “[B]asically, there are three ways of getting information out right now — get access to the Noor ISP (which has about 8 percent of the market), use a land line to call someone, or use dial-up.”
Egyptians with dial-up modems get no Internet connection when they call into their local ISP, but calling an international number to reach a modem in another country gives them a connection to the outside world.
We Rebuild is looking to expand those dial-up options. It has set up a dial-up phone number in Sweden and is compiling a list of other numbers Egyptians can call. It is distributing information about its activities on a Wiki page.
One of the dial-up numbers is run by a small ISP called the French Data Network, which said it was the first time it had set up such a service. Its modem has been providing a connection “every few minutes,” said Benjamin Bayart, FDN’s president, speaking in an online chat.
The international dial-up numbers only work for people with access to a telephone modem and an international calling service, however. So although mobile networks have been suspended in some areas, people have posted instructions about how others can use their mobile phones as dial-up modems.
