Syrian Internet outage mystery remains

Internet services across Syria have come to a crashing halt as web traffic from the country dropped to nil slightly before 1900 GMT on Tuesday. Exactly what has caused the Internet outage remains unknown. This isn't the first time Syrians have been cut off from the Internet.

In November of 2012, the entire country was off-line for three days. The cause for the November Internet outage was laid at the feet of "terrorists" by the Syrian government. However, some experts believe that the November outage was perpetrated by the Syrian government.

Some of these Internet experts believe that the Syrian government blocked access to the Internet in November as it fights a bloody internal conflict. There was some suggestion that the reason for the outage back in November could have been the Syrian government trying to disrupt communications of rebels in preparation for some sort of offensive. Jim Cowie, a spokesperson for a web company called Renesys says that there isn't enough information available to determine the specific cause of the blackout that occurred last night.

However, he did note that the current Internet blackout seems to be very similar to the one that occurred November. The BBC reports that Syrian residents report that while the Internet is down, mobile phones and landline phones are functioning normally.

[via BBC]