Internet Shutdowns

Major mobile operator Claro has been affected by a multi-hour outage extending to large swaths of the country, later narrowing to the capital Quito. The outage coincides with President Lenin Moreno declaring a curfew amidst ongoing public protests against the government’s austerity measures. Meanwhile, Telefónica Movistar released a statement saying that part of its telecommunications infrastructure was affected by unknown actors, which could degrade its services. A report subsequently published by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) highlighted that interruption in the state’s fiberoptic cabling could impact other telecom operators, like Movistar, that use those cables to provide their services.

Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory show that social media backend image and CDN servers were temporarily disrupted in Ecuador with state-run operator Corporación Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CNT) on Monday, 7 October 2019 amid a spiralling political crisis and widespread protests.