The Bangladesh government ordered suspension of high-speed internet services in the country a day before national elections were held last week on December 30. The suspension was ordered to “prevent rumours and propaganda surrounding the vote,” Zakir Hussain Khan of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said, per Reuters. The order was meant to be effective until Sunday midnight. The suspension was lifted two hours after polling ended at 4 pm on Sunday, but internet was slowed down again at 9 pm that evening again until further orders, per bdnews24.com. 3G & 4G services were finally restored on the morning of January 1 - after a suspension that lasted 37 hours. People were unable to browse the internet, stream videos, or upload photographs during this period. Internet services were intermittently suspended even before the elections - on December 27, the Bangladesh government slowed down the internet by suspending 3G & 4G, and restored it after 10 hours on Friday morning. This shutdown was reportedly ordered after the BTRC members told representatives of the International Internet Gateway in a meeting that social media sites, especially Facebook, would be blocked if necessary. The Awami League’s Sheikh Hasina returned for her third term as prime minister after her party swept the polls, winning 288 out of 300 seats in the Bangladesh parliament. Journalists accused under new Digital Security Act Yesterday, a journalist was arrested and another is on the run after a local government official filed a case against them for publishing “false information”…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...