Most Internet outages are caused by technical problems on the part of the service provider. However, governments can also cause them on purpose. There are many reasons for governments to shut down the internet, like censoring online protesters, but doing so is very expensive.
This is put into perspective by a new report from Top10VPN. The report says that shutdowns that were ordered by the government have cost the world economy more than $10 billion so far in 2022. This is twice as much as last year, and it’s only the middle of 2022.
The research team at Top10VPN kept track of government shutdowns in 16 countries and calculated how much they cost each day, including how much it cost to stop millions of people from protesting in Russia and Pakistan.
Some governments shut down the internet to stop students from cheating on tests. This happened in Sudan, Syria, Algeria, and other places. Even though they weren’t caused by war, shutdowns that had nothing to do with the war still cost the global economy more than $6 million a day.
It’s important to note that Top10VPN’s report only looks at major outages and doesn’t take into account the economic and human rights costs of smaller outages. So, it’s likely that the real cost to the world economy is much higher than what has been said.
But experts agree with TopVPN’s report patterns that costs will continue to go out of control as shutdowns of the internet become more common around the world for various reasons.
