Internet shutdowns by governments are bad for corporate marketing

[NotATether]

There was a brief total internet shutdown over here today that lasted for a few hours. All of the ISPs cut off internet access for some reason and then restored it back. It reminded me of the time mobile internet access was shut down for almost three months last year. Obviously they didn't touch broadband lines so that they didn't disrupt company operations and bring economic selling to a halt. But I have a reason to believe that civilians deprived of internet access is dangerous for companies trying to make a profit.

In third-world countries, companies rely on social media platforms like Facebook for their marketing, advertising and to attract new customers. By shutting off internet access, you are effectively drying up their revenue streams, which cannot continue for too long (like for the course of months), or all of them will start reporting losses. Nearly all people here use 4G or 3G internet on their SIM cards, and not a router. So the more people using mobile internet in a country, the more drastic the consequences of an internet shutdown are for companies.

Other countries appear to be importing Sudan's internet shutdown techniques (India, Ethiopia) but surely they have to know that by shutting down the internet, they are reducing company sales. Sure the company's operations themselves aren't affected, but how are they supposed to sustain them without sales?

Of course a company that ships physical goods isn't affected by an internet shutdown, but they still lose their social media marketing abilities, because no one can read them.

Seriously though, does anyone happen to know the cause for the loss of internet today?

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[jackg]

Loss of Internet isn't really good for citizens or companies alike.

And yeah corporations might be affected if they have to export stuff too and the shutdown lasts a while? Unless things are verbally arranged with freight and Air operators.

I think reducing Internet everywhere (including Europe and the US) would also cause a huge loss of company profits, sure the large companies can get TV and Radio adverts but smaller companies might be fully reliant in social media...

[oHnK]

Nowdays, corporate really need internet for operational support for especially in marketing. The way to promote their corporate have changed from conventional to digital.  When government shutdown internet for any reason, it will sacrifice many things. Corporate will get the worst effect of loss internet. There are much values of money in every seconds we passed from internet traffic. Conventional business have moved on to digital, during the pandemic the internet really help business in marketing. They use internet to keep the connection with costumers. They move from the old way to digital way in service for keep their costumers. Shutdown internet really bad policy if we looked at marketing side.

[Upgrade00]

Asides the economic effect, it is a violation of human rights as people can not freely communicate. Gagging the [Social] media is a means of censorship used to control the citizens and quell protests or revolts.

On the economic effect; the internet has become  a major factor in Small and Medium Enterprises, and this is the sector that drives an economy. Markets are also interconnected, hence, SMEs are dependent on Large cooperations and vice versa, shutting down the internet would have a general effect regardless of whether there is a backdoor for select businesses.

The except below is taken from an article posted in 2019 and gives a rough idea of the impact of an internet shutdown;

The Cost of Shutdown tool developed by Netblocks and the Internet Society estimates that five days of a total Internet shutdown in Sudan — which the country is currently experiencing — will result in an accumulated economic loss of $228,924,285.

You can find the tool here - https://netblocks.org/cost/
I think, If a government doesn't consider the rights of its citizens, then it is possible the economic impact of a censorship would equally not be considered.

[Findingnemo]

Government don't shutdown the internet on the whole country, they are doing it in the particular region right? So not much of the economic activities are going to get affected and internet has been shutdown normally to stop the communication between local people and outside people so no one other than people there knows exactly what is happening and this is normally implemented in tension between military and locals.

[AjithBtc]

Each and everything is now associated with internet, when there is some issue with internet automatically big loss is being experienced by every functional sector. In my country internet shutdowns takes place at times of protest, because the gathering of people were organised through the social media platforms. Corporate marketing generate majority of the revenue through the firms.

[Silberman]

While there is not doubt that such a thing will affect business negatively if the Internet was out just for a few hours then most likely this was not the result of some kind of desire from the government to stall communications over the Internet and most likely there was something wrong within the network that needed to be fixed and the only way to do this was by shutting down the Internet, however since there seems to be a previous history of these kind of tactics being employed in your country then it is important to be careful, is there something happening in your country that could make the government do something like this, like massive protests being arranged on social media?

[audaciousbeing]

Before internet, people have been doing business and there are even companies that have survived for centuries and during those dark days, that was when they witnessed some of their massive growth. Internet comes with its own advantage but it does not means that without it, people wont still find a way to transact and do business with one another. Now when government shut down the internet, while businesses whose existence relied on that, they would surely have their reason for doing that and that is what the citizens needs to find out whether their reasons are valid or not.

[NotATether]

Government don't shutdown the internet on the whole country, they are doing it in the particular region right?

That's only the case for India's Kashmir province, they can't afford the fallout of doing a countrywide shutdown like Sudan and Ethiopia did. India's entire tech sector and every company's offshore ops in India would be severed if they did that.

It seems that the less important your country is to world affairs, the easier it is for its leaders to get away with this stuff.


UPDATE: They did it again this morning for a couple of hours. First both of the Zain MiFis stopped connecting, then our Sudani SIM cards ceased shortly after. This was definitely a deliberate shutdown, because the chance of all four devices failing at once is slim. This kind of service, which we're paying for, is not acceptable, and I'm thinking about contacting their support desks to ask what's going on.

I really hope this is not going to be the normal way of life.

[Silberman]

Before internet, people have been doing business and there are even companies that have survived for centuries and during those dark days, that was when they witnessed some of their massive growth. Internet comes with its own advantage but it does not means that without it, people wont still find a way to transact and do business with one another. Now when government shut down the internet, while businesses whose existence relied on that, they would surely have their reason for doing that and that is what the citizens needs to find out whether their reasons are valid or not.

It is true that businesses existed before the Internet but right now many of them depend on the Internet to reduce costs and to be more effective if you take it away then things will get ugly really fast, just think of restaurants, for the most part people are avoiding restaurants where I live but they have been able to remain open thanks to services like Uber Eats that allow you to order from them, if that is taken away I can assure you they will collapse in a matter of weeks or months and that is never good for the economy.

[Serious475]

Today internet is one of the most needed by the companies and other things not only in businesses internet are one of the most essential thing because most of the progress today are with the use of it.

1. On business
They are using their internet to keep.active their databases and other stuffs connected with the internet.

2. Schools
Today this is the most needed because of this covid some of the school require having to their online class. Some of the schools too are moving forward with the use of the File cabinet storage of their files. They are using with the internet  too.

If the internet will gone it becomes one of the most disaster could happen into a specific place.   

[cheezcarls]

There was a brief total internet shutdown over here today that lasted for a few hours. All of the ISPs cut off internet access for some reason and then restored it back. It reminded me of the time mobile internet access was shut down for almost three months last year. Obviously they didn't touch broadband lines so that they didn't disrupt company operations and bring economic selling to a halt. But I have a reason to believe that civilians deprived of internet access is dangerous for companies trying to make a profit.

In third-world countries, companies rely on social media platforms like Facebook for their marketing, advertising and to attract new customers. By shutting off internet access, you are effectively drying up their revenue streams, which cannot continue for too long (like for the course of months), or all of them will start reporting losses. Nearly all people here use 4G or 3G internet on their SIM cards, and not a router. So the more people using mobile internet in a country, the more drastic the consequences of an internet shutdown are for companies.

Other countries appear to be importing Sudan's internet shutdown techniques (India, Ethiopia) but surely they have to know that by shutting down the internet, they are reducing company sales. Sure the company's operations themselves aren't affected, but how are they supposed to sustain them without sales?

Of course a company that ships physical goods isn't affected by an internet shutdown, but they still lose their social media marketing abilities, because no one can read them.

Seriously though, does anyone happen to know the cause for the loss of internet today?

You may add Belarus as well in the internet shutdown incident (which was for that fraudulent election by that dictator Lukashenko and his high rank officials) and it’s not fair. A lot of people are pissed off by that internet shutdown, in which they can only rely communicating each other via SMS or phone calls. Especially those who are working with crypto projects and needs internet connection to do the job or communicating with the team, etc. in Belarus, will also be pissed off missing something.

Imagine if you are a bounty hunter or airdropper or even a day trader from Belarus who failed to meet the deadline in submitting entries, etc., due to the government’s internet shutdown. I just hope that Elon Musk’s satellites deploying in space would give us free internet without interruptions soon.

[Lordhermes]

When it comes to business infrastructure in terms marketing strategies, internet is a key factor in driving mechanism in this day generation/century, clearly, there was some slight difficulties in promoting businesses in the old era than now, currently, almost 95% of digital companies and corporations especially crypto related ones depends solely on social media platforms for their promotions, online gaming activities for gamblers, customer care support centers and many more.

Shutting down internet stops these actually thereby reduces rate of profit, and would really be a huge drop down of income percentages on a day to day sales, I just imagine how Huobi would loss profit if China shutdown internet for two days because 80% of traders are Chinese if I'm not mistaking.

Imagine if you are a bounty hunter or airdropper or even a day trader from Belarus who failed to meet the deadline in submitting entries, etc., due to the government’s internet shutdown.

Lol, this will really hurt a lot, I could remember when failure of Internet connections forfeits me of having counted stakes in a bounty campaign, talk of Internet shutdown, it pains.

[lixer]

This kind of thing have not happened in my country before. But the thought of a government shutting down internet, mehn that’s really a dumb thing to do; why would they be shutting down the internet, for what reason exactly? In our world today most of the things that we are doing has to do with internet.

There are some companies like online shopping platforms like Amazon that relies completely on the internet, because without the and if people don’t have access to the internet there is no way that these companies are going to make any sale. And that company might be one that’s contributing well to the GDP of the country. It’s not a good thing to shut down internet.

[Yatsan]

Since people are practically being reliant on the usage and availability of internet, loss of connection from telecommunications companies, internet providers is such a great hassle for the people whether ordinary or those working in the corporate world. Not just business people and companies are being affected with loss of connectivity provided by internet but also students and remote workers that are working at home specially at times like this that almost everything are now being reliant or dependent on digitalization which uses modern technology gadgets and are gaining access for different source of transactions using internet.

Here in my country, the problem with telecommunications and internet providers are having an expensive service fee for the internet connectivity but the service is such a slow and pale which most of the time fails to connect or at times getting disconnected while you were at the middle of your stuffs. But such thing of the government shutting down a telecommunications company or internet service provider have not happened and surely would be impossible for it will cause commotion.

[Mauser]

I believe only during a period without internet like in a shutdown or during power outages we really realise how reliant we became on technology. We need internet for almost everything these days, without it we are lost. We order food online, buy almost anything online, even groceries. We need internet to watch Netflix, movies and SmartTV.  So when the government is shutting down the internet it's limiting a lot of possible sales from the economy.

[hulla]

Venezuela and Iran should be included in this category. In Venezuela no tangible reason behind internet blocked execept for claiming it political decision while in Iran was shut down to stop people from voting.

Government don't shutdown the internet on the whole country, they are doing it in the particular region right? So not much of the economic activities are going to get affected

In centralized countries where modern colonialism and imperialism are practiced anything can happen for a selfish reason which will generate big money for the group in government.

[justdimin]

I am sure there a lot more downsides to internet shutdown compared to corporate marketing. I mean sure corporations do not do marketing as much because there are no people online and that means bad for business and I agree that it is bad for business and when it is bad for business those companies make less profit and when they make less profit they hire less people and pay less taxes and eventually one internet shutdown becomes something huge.

However we are talking about something bigger, internet is something so huge that it allows people to connect to each other all around the world, when you shut that down you are basically cutting ties with the world at this day and age so it could potentially have stuff that are way bigger than just companies not doing marketing.

[shoreno]

never experience a loss on internet for a long time but internet can be unavailable here if the networks are conducting a maintenance or if there s something wrong like thier towers were damage by narural events but im lucky because network operators here can respond quickly and problem dont take long enough like what happened on you case  which took 3 months , cant imagine my life like that if i was on your situation . however internet here is slow and even got slower and i suspect this is because of pandemic .

[mnporter2001]

Of course a company that ships physical goods isn't affected by an internet shutdown, but they still lose their social media marketing abilities, because no one can read them.

Seriously though, does anyone happen to know the cause for the loss of internet today?

Our world is now modernized and any job requires internet and technology. So the loss of internet in a few hours for a country has a huge impact on the jobs and income of many technology companies.
Although I don't know where the cause comes from, I hope the government should seriously stop this problem. Internet disconnection will affect the lives and work of many people at that time.