Cloudflare Radar in its internet outage report said that the recent internet blackout in Bangladesh was directed by the government.
Quoting three telecom operators and an International Internet Gateway company, Cloudflare Radar said that the government directed internet outage in Bangladesh started from July 18 at 8.45pm.
Cloudflare Radar is a hub that showcases global internet traffic, attacks, and technology trends and insights, powered by data from Cloudflare鈥檚 global network and other sources.
According to its internet outage report, Earth Telecommunication, an international internet gateway company, shut down its services on July 18 at 6:00pm, while telecom operator Robi Axiata shut down its internet services at 6:30pm on the same day.
Telecom operators Banglalink and Grameenphone also shut down their internet services on the same day, at 2:15am and 1:30am respectively.
The government shut down the internet connection across the country on July 18 amid countrywide quota reform protests, and restored the services partially on July 23.
The broadband connection was restored countrywide on July 24, on a trial basis.
Mobile internet services had yet to be restored till filing of this report on Saturday evening.
State minister for posts, telecommunications and information technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said on Saturday that a meeting would be held with mobile operators today.
鈥業f the meeting is satisfactory, the 4G network will be restored by Sunday or Monday,鈥� said Palak.
The government claimed that the internet services were snapped after the building housing the data centre supplying a large volume of internet traffic was set on fire.
The Internet Services Providers鈥� Association of Bangladesh, however, said that no such incident took place.
Due to a fire incident at an adjacent building, some underground and overhead data cables were damaged, which affected 20鈥�30 per cent of the internet traffic, said Emdadul Haque, president of the Internet Services Providers鈥� Association.
Experts said that shutting down internet services and social media platforms was a violation of constitutional rights of the citizens, as it prevented citizens from exercising the rights to freedom of expressions.
Earlier on Friday, Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of the Transparency International Bangladesh, told 抖阴精品 that inaccessibility to internet, including digital platforms like social media, not only deprived people of their right to information and freedom of opinion, but also restricted the prospect of transparent and accountable management of the crisis.
鈥楢part from the enormous costs in terms of digital platform based business and services, it is also contradictory to our constitution and relevant laws as well as Bangladesh鈥檚 commitments as a signatory to relevant international legal instruments under which the government is pledge bound to ensure free flow of information and freedom of opinion,鈥� he said.