8,927 hours of blackout: World’s worst Internet shutdowns cost India $2.8 billion in 2020

Internet shutdowns cost India $2.8 billion, putting the South Asian nation at the top of a list of 21 countries that curbed citizens’ web access in 2020.

India — the second-worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of overall confirmed infections — accounted for about three-quarters of the $4 billion lost worldwide to internet curbs. It’s losses more than doubled compared to 2019, a report from a UK-based digital privacy and security research group showed.

Some countries known to limit Internet access or censor material like China and North Korea were not included in the report because researchers relied on publicly available open source information and documented internet and social media shutdowns.