Bangladesh reinstates fixed-line internet at select locations

Bangladesh authorities have ordered fixed-line internet providers to restore service only partially at locations of strategic value, according to a directive issued by the country’s internet regulators obtained by Netra News.

This stands in stark contrast to claims made by Zunaid Ahmed Palak, Minister of Post, Telecommunications, and Information Technology, that connection to the internet would be restored in Bangladesh.

The order by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission specifically instructed providers to block any connectivity that attempts to bypass traffic through deep packet inspection, a type of data processing that can be used for eavesdropping and censorship, among other purposes.

“That’s so they can see which sites are being accessed, from where, by which devices or IP addresses,” said an expert familiar with Bangladesh’s internet infrastructure.

It also mandated that the block on Facebook, a widely used social media network in Bangladesh, remain in place during the ongoing unrest. However, some users flocked to social media once the shutdown was partially lifted, using VPNs and other proxy methods.

Internet restoration was ordered at hospitals nationwide – except those in Basundhara Residential Zone, a protest hotspot – and in diplomatic zones in Dhaka.

The order specified a host of strategic locations such as the military cantonment and areas surrounding major government offices, including the Prime Minister’s Office, the Supreme Court, the secretariat, and law enforcement agencies.

Mohammad A. Arafat, the State Minister for Information and Broadcasting, had earlier said that the nationwide internet outage had been caused by protesters setting fire to internet cables where they were overground. His ministry circulated a statement via the Bangladesh Embassy in Washington, asserting that the outage was caused by a data centre in the capital being attacked by protesters.

Despite these claims, which were repeated in a propaganda video shared by the Prime Minister’s son and Information Communication Technology adviser, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, on social media, Netra News has reported on the use of internet shutdowns as a strategy for containment and suppression. 

Cloudflare, a US-based content network delivery service, earlier noted the Internet outage in Bangladesh was “Government Directed” and was caused “in response to student protests.”

Digital rights organisations such as Access Now have repeatedly expressed grave concerns about the implications arising from this shutdown.