World’s worst internet shutdown of 8,927 hours estimates a loss of $2.8 billion for India in 2020

The Internet shutdown costed India the sum of $2.8 billion, with India now leading in the list of 21 countries who had curbed internet access of the citizens in 2020.

India accounts for the three-quarters of the $4 billion lost globally citing curbing web access and the losses have been almost twice as that of 2019, according to the reports submitted by UK based digital privacy and security research group.

Certain countries like China and North Korea were not included in the report as the compilation of data was exclusively based on the open source available regarding the documented internet and social media shutdowns due to their lack of transparency.

India led the list in terms of restricting the internet access with 8,927 hours, commencing from 2019 and continued throughout 2020 as per the report released by Top10VPN titled Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns.

In 2019, as Jammu and Kashmir’s special state status was revoked and there bandwidth restrictions imposed by Centre in 2019, though the country had 7 month major lockdown, the access for medicines, businesses and schools was severely affected.

The losses due to the internet blackout were estimated by indicators from the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union, and Software Freedom Law Centre based in Delhi. The calculations of the loss are inclusive of the social media shutdowns.

Following India in the line, Belarus was affected the second-most with a loss of $336.4 million with 218 hours of blackout which impacted 7.9 million people. Myanmar had a blackout imposed for 5,160 hours and Yemen with 912 hours of internet disruption incurred losses of $237 million.

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