Disruptions in Sudan April 2023

Sudan (the)

19 April, 2023 00:00 - 24 April, 2023 16:00 (5 days 16 hours)

Local Impact

Sudan has experienced multiple Internet interruptions as fighting between the army and paramilitary forces intensified in Khartoom and beyond.

According to Reuters, Sudanese provider MTN was ordered to shutdown the Internet on 16 April but connectivity was restored shortly after. After several days of disruptions, the country was completely disconnected from the global Internet by 23 April 2023.

Because much of Chad’s upstream connectivity is provided by Sudatel through SudaChad, Chad is also experiencing Internet disruption as a knock on effect.

Experiences

Internet in #Sudan is down for most providers, and the ones working are patchy and will go down soon. Mostly because major telecom towers were damaged. I’m currently hotspotting from MTN but won’t have it for long.
Losing internet in such circumstances is terrifying.

— Hamid Khalafallah (@HamidMurtada) April 24, 2023

Data and Analysis

KanarTel (AS33788) faced partial disruptions from 19 April, followed by near-full disconnection from 21 April. Sudatel and MaxNet faced full disruption at 00:00 23 April. SDN-MOBITEL faced disruptions from 00:00 24 April. You can see the disruptions as they appeared on measurements collected by IODA, Google Transparency Report, and Cloudflare Radar below. On 16:00 24 April, Sudatel and SDN-MOBITEL came back online. These two networks serve over 75% of the market.

This disruption is also affecting Internet service in neighbouring Chad.

IODA

More from IODA: https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/country/SD?from=1681682400&until=

Cloudflare Radar

More from Cloudflare Radar: https://radar.cloudflare.com/sd

Google Transparency Report

Details of report

Conversations

Back on #Sudan Coverage today.
Day 9: A near-total internet outage is being reported in most of the country as fighting continues between the Sudan Army & Rapid Support Forces (RSF), despite the announcement of a 72-hour truce. Live updates every top of the hour on @BBCWorld pic.twitter.com/3k8wXkXDSt

— Mercy Juma (@MercyJuma_) April 23, 2023

Trying to speak to sources in Sudan but the internet outage due to days and days of fighting is making it difficult to do so. #Sudan_updates #السودان #Sudan pic.twitter.com/2PMZcxZNca

— Urooba Jamal (@uroobajamal) April 23, 2023

Internet & telephone cut off by fighting in #Sudan: Internet & telephone has been down in #Khartoum since last night as a result of heavy fighting, SAF & RSF accused each other of destroying communications centres, also hospitals & petrol stations are out of service.#SouthSudan pic.twitter.com/pefG8Q0JHs

— Juba Daily News (@JubaDailyNews) April 24, 2023

The impact of fighting in Sudan continues to disrupt Internet infrastructure connectivity in both Sudan and Chad. In particular, AS15706 (Sudatel), shows drops in routing announcements (BGP) and Active Probing. Follow in near realtime: https://t.co/1LByCpqRo6 pic.twitter.com/M5nw9EuaAG

— IODA (@IODA_live) May 10, 2023

Internet Shutdowns

Sudan (the)