India suffered longest Internet shutdowns in 2020 globally

India suffered the longest Internet shutdowns in 2020 for the second year running globally, bearing the biggest economic impact of $2.8 billion and 8,927 hours lost, affecting 10.3 million users in total, a new report from the UK-based privacy and security research firm Top10VPN has revealed.

As in previous years, India continued to restrict internet access more than any other country — over 75 times in 2020.

“The majority of these short blackouts were highly-targeted, affecting groups of villages or individual city districts and so were not included in this report, which focuses on larger region-wide shutdowns. The true economic cost is therefore likely to be even higher than the $2.8 billion we have calculated,” the researchers informed.