Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has called upon its citizens to ration their internet usage. This comes after two of its three undersea fiber optic links were recently severed. The cut cables have caused communication difficulties for millions of people throughout the Middle East. Ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur was quoted as saying, 'People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"

Comments

These cables were cut on purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

The cables in the mideast have all been cut on purpose. When they were first laid out, we did not have as good interception equipment as is now available. However, going down and installing equipment capable of intercepting, duplicating, and analyzing their traffic without increasing latency in the slightest would require an unexplained interruption in service while it was being installed. While the lines are being repaired, further up in a difficult-to-reach location or hub, the NSA is now installing this equipment. Afterwards, they can copy all data sent through the cable without raising any eyebrows. There will be no proof.

Re:These cables were cut on purpose

[darkmeridian]

There's no need to do that with these cables. They have at end somewhere, right? So what the NSA/bad guys do is to tap the ends of the wires. The ISP sometimes helps.

Internet the new water food and shelter...

[psychicsword]

It seems that Internet is now making its way up with water food and shelter for human necessities :P

Re:No more pr0n

[eiapoce]

No more pr0n for Egypt. Or 2-6 pics per person per day. Poor chaps. You didn't mean PORN, you meant SEX!

That's accordin to google labs, porn is for UK, New Zealand and Australia where getting sex isn't a problem while sofisticated porn is difficult to see http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 - Sex is clearly what Egiptians are looking for http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Re:Who is it more important to?

[hoojus]

appealed to the public's common sense Never heard of this what is it? Even so just because the public are using it for entertainment purposes this is no less important than business use. If these people are paying the same amount then they should have equal use. If business are paying more and the contracts (to ISPs) specify selective throttling then I have no problem. But I know that my ISP has no signed contract with me that allows them to put other customer's needs before mine. Make no mistake whether big business or home user they are both customers and should be treated equally.

Re:Same Story

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Here's the oft repeated story again, instead of trying to improve infrastructure and services (like backup lines for instance) the consumers are the ones left holding the bag. In fact they're already using the word 'rationing'. Why is it that almost always its the consumers who bear the burden of whatever boo boo's made by the service providers ?

This isn't a private company, it's the entire country's connection to the rest of the world. As in, the government. And there are redundancies, that's why they can still connect. Two of the three main cables (each over a mile apart) failed simultanously.

On the other hand though the statement is worded unsurprisingly inept, i guess the sentiment here might be to take stock of the usage and avoiding unnecessary bandwidth hogging for a while. Though what's unnecessary should be left to the consumers to define for themselves. A simple request for 'help' and 'understanding' would have been more useful without generating all the negative publicity that I'm sure this will generate.

That's pretty much what they did. They said there was limited bandwidth, and asked people not to download music and movies because it would eat up bandwidth that might be needed for contining business purposes.

If you read all his comments, it is quite polite and understanding of individuals' rights. You might not think it was polite because it was translated from Arabic. Egypt is a different country than the United States. Many other countries speak languages besides English.

Re:No more pr0n

[sakdoctor]

This might be a more useful comparison. This plot of porn and sex, ranked by sex, shows the countries that are most affected.

And yes, Egypt ranks first, followed by India.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn%2C+sex&ctab=0&geo=all&geor=all&date=all&sort=1

Wednesday - MI5 complain ; Thursday - cables cut

[evilandi]

Wednesday - MI5 issues report complaining they don't have the tools to intercept internet telephony

Thursday - BOTH Middle-Eastern internet trunk routes that pass near the large British naval base in Cyprus suddenly go dark for a conveniently precise period of one week

Oh, we're subtle, I'll give you that.

Re:Who is it more important to?

[1u3hr]

But I know that my ISP has no signed contract with me that allows them to put other customer's needs before mine. Make no mistake whether big business or home user they are both customers and should be treated equally.

Good luck with that.

A year ago some cables running south of Taiwan were cut by an earthquake. In Hong Kong the immediate effect was to slow down access. But a few hours later, they had reconfigured it so that domestic users, like myself, working at home, got ZERO connectivity, as they gave almost all the capacity to their business clients. I couldn't even check my email, on Yahoo, for a week. And you know that businesses were just sending the same bloated powerpoint files and videos to each other.

IMHO, they should give a minimum connectivity to everyone so you can use email, the most vital of all services. But when they have their big customers screaming at them about how slow their service is, they'll cheerfully cut off home users completely, knowing most have no alternative.