Regional shutdown
Districts that border India
The shutdown of roughly 2,000 mobile phone towers affected 32 border districts, with roughly 10 million mobile phone subscribers.
- Total Duration 2 days
Bangladesh
- Population
- 171,466,990
- UN Classification
-
- Least Developed Country
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
The shutdown of roughly 2,000 mobile phone towers affected 32 border districts, with roughly 10 million mobile phone subscribers.
Other supporting information
The country’s telecom regulator has ordered operators to suspend mobile network coverage within one kilometer along its border with India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new citizenship law, which gives citizenship rights to Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan who settled in India before 2015, but not to Muslims, prompted the order. The law has triggered protests across India, and officials in Bangladesh had voiced concerns over the possibility that Indian Muslims might seek to enter Bangladesh.
On January 1, an email from the regulator instructed the country’s mobile operators, Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink and Teletalk, to restore mobile services in the border areas.
Social media
Neither broadband nor SMS service restored yet which was supposed to restore at 12 and It's already 10:20 AM.@sardesairajdeep @Nidhi https://t.co/AQJwtsu8WW — Tufail Banday 🍥 (@Tufail_Banday) January 1, 2020