India leads world in internet restrictions, shutdowns resulted in loss of USD 2.8 billion in 2020: Report

NEW DELHI:  India continued to lead the world in restricting internet access to its citizens—with over 75 instances of internet shutdowns in 2020, according to the Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns report released by Top10VPN.

These shutdowns are estimated to have cost the country’s economy $2.8 billion last year, higher than any other nation in the world.

“We calculated over 27,000 hours of internet shutdowns around the world in 2020 to have cost the global economy $4.01 billion. This represents a 50 per cent decrease in impact compared to $8.05 billion in 2019,” said the report.

India’s losses, however, more than doubled compared to 2019 with 1,655 hours of blackouts and 7,272 hours of bandwidth throttling observed here last year. 

“The majority of these short blackouts were highly-targeted, affecting groups of villages or individual city districts, and so were not included in this report, which focuses on larger region-wide shutdowns. The true economic cost is therefore likely to be even higher than the $2.8 billion we have calculated,” said the report. 

It added that in Kashmir, authorities lifted restrictions in March 2020, seven months after the government had scrapped its autonomous status.

However, authorities continued to severely throttle internet speeds after the lifting of the ban, with citizens only able to access 2G connections.

The restrictions have negatively impacted the distribution of medicine, businesses and schools, the report said. After India, Belarus was most impacted by such actions.