Frank Bitterlich

Exactly 50 years ago, on August 13, 1961, the East German dictatorial government finally admitted its failure by building the “Berlin Wall.” They actually thought that they could control the people by oppressing them, taking away their freedom, and their basic human rights – like freedom of expression. What a funny idea – nobody would consider such measures in any free country any more. Except…

… maybe some authorities in San Francisco, like the Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART), who thought it might be a good idea to shut down all mobile networks in their area to prevent a demonstration.

… or maybe the British government, who are openly considering blocking access to certain social networks and services like Twitter and Facebook, to contain the London riots.

… or maybe the Mubarak government of pre-revolution Egypt, thinking that shutting down mobile networks and blocking internet access would somehow make all these angry people go away. But that was completely different, of course… some far off, dictatorial country. That could never happen here.

Congratulations to the people of Egypt. It is great what you have accomplished, and in a completely peaceful way.

Now just don´t forget the great responsibility you have in reshaping your country.

As of 2100h UTC, Jan. 31, the last remaining network in Egypt went down. The netblock in question is AS20928, operated by The Noor Group out of Cairo.

All other Egyptian ISPs went down last week already. I don´t know the reason why Noor remained online. Maybe they had special permission from the government, since a lot of important networks were in this block - the Egypt stock exchange, banks, aviation. But maybe, just maybe, someone inside Noor decided not to bow to the government at once to refrained from pulling the plug. If so, you have my respect. The Internet needs more people like this.

For today (Tuesday, Feb. 1), the Egypt government is planning to pull the plug on the remaining cell phone services and even disrupt the rail service to prevent protesters from joining the “March of the Million” protests. Good luck, guys.