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

Adding to the problem...

[Statecraftsman]

Though I've never looked for an Egyptian site before, my curiousity may have added a little to the problem:

The server at www.egypt.gov.eg is taking too long to respond.

Re:Adding to the problem...

[The One and Only]

Have we ever slashdotted an entire country before?

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:Next up...

[Zorque]

All it's asking is that people try and refrain from heavy downloading (music, movies, etc) for a little while until the lines are fixed. They're not asking people to give up the internet entirely. It would be pretty stupid of them to have a large portion of their economy collapse just so people could torrent.

Re:These cables were cut on purpose

[kestasjk]

That would leave proof, and that would totally ruin the fun of coming up with some elaborate baseless conspiracy theory. What good is a conspiracy theory if there's a way to disprove it that doesn't require a submarine?

Re:Ah, good times

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every country can afford the redundancy mate. It's called being poor.

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:Why not?

[Edgester]

* cables fixed *
Ah, thank you aziz.