Our report analyzes every major internet shutdown around the world in 2019 and reveals this growing trend cost the global economy over $8 billion last year...

This Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns annual report identifies the total economic impact of every major internet blackout and social media shutdown around the world in 2019.

We collated every national and region-wide incident, determined the duration of the restrictions and used the COST tool to calculate their economic impact.

This tool, developed by internet monitoring NGO Netblocks, uses indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat and US Census.

We calculated over 19,000 hours of internet shutdowns around the world in 2019 to have cost the global economy $8.07 billion. This represents a 235% increase in impact compared to $2.4 billion in 2015/16, according to the most recently available analysis.

Jump straight to economic impact data by region and by country.

We also found that there were more internet shutdowns in 2019 than ever before. We included in this report 134 major incidents, ie that were national or region-wide in their impact, that took place during the last 12 months.

However once you include the 90-plus smaller blackouts in India[1] plus other localized and partial restrictions, it’s clear that the previous year’s record total of 196 documented shutdowns has been surpassed...