In the face of mounting political unrest, Egypt took the unprecedented step of severing all Internet connections and shutting down its cellphone services—with the cooperation of international firms.
Egyptian authorities asked mobile operators to "turn down the network totally," said Vittorio Colao, chief executive of U.K.-based Vodafone Group PLC, which owns 55% of Egypt's largest carrier, Vodafone Egypt
Mr. Colao, speaking Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said the request was legitimate under Egyptian law, but he hoped the government would reverse course soon.
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Many of the mobile operators in Egypt, including Vodafone, rely on Telecom Egypt, the incumbent national fixed-line provider, to carry parts of their service. Telecom Egypt is majority owned by the government.
Egypt has dozens of Internet providers, but they rely primarily on five large carriers, including Telecom Egypt, for Internet connectivity.
Starting at 10:12 p.m. local time on Thursday night, Telecom Egypt went dark, followed by the four remaining main carriers over the next 13 minutes, said Jim Cowie, chief technology officer of Renesys Corp., a network security firm in Manchester, N.H. By 10:25 p.m., the country no longer existed on the Internet, he said.
Other countries attempting to undermine or contain political uprisings in recent years—from Myanmar in 2007 to Iran and China in 2009—have also clamped down on Internet access and cellphone use.
But Egypt's crackdown appears unique in both scale and synchronization, particularly for a country with such an advanced infrastructure with so many providers, according to Internet security experts.
"What's shocking about this is that they didn't just take down a certain domain name or block a website—they took the whole Internet down," said Mr. Cowie.
France Telecom SA, which operates a venture in Egypt with its local partner Orascom Telecom, said Egyptian authorities "had taken measures" to cut off its mobile and Internet services in the country, provided through its subsidiary called Mobinil.
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