Internet traffic started to come back in Sudan (with limitations) on Thursday, November 18, 2021. This happened after 25 days of an almost complete shutdown that affected the whole country. It’s a simple line going up on a chart for us, but for a country that also meant that Internet access was (at least in part) back on with all of what comes with it for businesses, communities, families and society as a whole...

Internet access was mostly cut off on October 25, 2021, after a political turmoil in the country. A Sudanese court previously ordered the restoration of Internet access on November 9, but until last Thursday, November 18, there were no signs of services returning to normal. The biggest Internet access shutdown in recent history in the country was back in 2019 — for a full 36 days...

We’ve said it before here in our blog, but it is always good to emphasize: Internet disruptions, including shutdowns and social media restrictions, are common occurrences in some countries and Sudan is one where this happens more frequently than most countries according to Human Rights Watch.

In our June 22, 2021, blog, we talked about Sudan when the country decided to shut down the Internet to prevent cheating in exams, but there were situations in the past more similar to this days-long shutdown — something that usually happens when there’s political unrest.

The country's longest recorded network disruption was back in 2018, when Sudanese authorities cut off access to social media (and messaging apps like WhatsApp) for 68 consecutive days from December 21, 2018, to February 26, 2019. After that, there was a full mobile Internet shutdown reported from June 3 to July 9, 2019, that lasted 36 days.

This time, in 2021, it was 25 days when the Internet access was reduced to just a trickle of traffic getting through...