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Blackouts

Blackouts, Crackdowns & Broadband Booms: Internet Access News Roundup (Sept 3–4, 2025)

Blackouts, Crackdowns & Broadband Booms: Internet Access News Roundup (Sept 3–4, 2025)

Infrastructure and Satellite Expansions Over the past 48 hours, major investments in physical internet infrastructure were unveiled worldwide. SpaceX capped a busy summer of launches with yet another batch of 24 Starlink broadband satellites lifted into orbit on August 29 ts2.tech. This marked SpaceX’s fourth Starlink launch in a month, expanding its constellation (now over 8,000 active satellites) and improving coverage in high-latitude regions like Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia ts2.tech. With this growth, Starlink continues to deliver high-speed internet to remote areas in dozens of countries. And it’s not alone – Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a rival low-Earth orbit satellite network, is
4 September 2025
Myanmar’s Internet Dilemma: From Blackouts to Starlink Dreams

Myanmar’s Internet Dilemma: From Blackouts to Starlink Dreams

In 2021, more than 400 cell towers were destroyed amid fighting, crippling parts of Myanmar’s mobile network. MPT’s FTTH network expanded to 154 of 330 townships by early 2024, up from 27 townships in 2019. As of early 2024, Myanmar had about 64.3 million mobile connections (roughly 117% SIM penetration), with 4G coverage around 90% of the population and 5G footprint below 1%. By late 2024, well over 3,000 Starlink dishes were reportedly active in Myanmar, with more than 80 units confiscated in 2022. In December 2021 the MoTC ordered mobile operators to double data prices, and by 2023 the
5 August 2025
Internet Kill Switch: Recurring Blackouts in Syria, Iraq, Algeria – And Who’s Next?

Internet Kill Switch: Recurring Blackouts in Syria, Iraq, Algeria – And Who’s Next?

Syria has conducted annual nationwide internet shutdowns on high school exam days since 2016, with 2020–2025 patterns showing daily outages of roughly 3.5 to 5.5 hours during exam periods. Syria’s shutdowns use an asymmetric model that allows outbound traffic but blocks inbound responses, making the internet effectively unusable. In Syria, the 2023 exam season produced at least 11 nationwide outages, each about 4 hours long (06:00–10:00), spanning May–June for the first round and late June–July for the second. Iraq began regular exam-related shutdowns in 2023, imposing near-daily four-hour nationwide outages (04:00–08:00) during exams, with a total of 42 outages in
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