Egypt disconnects reaches twenty-four hours

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appeared on state television at approximately 2:15 p.m. PT today to announce that he would sack his cabinet but would not resign--an indication that no end to the disconnect was near. "I will not be lax or tolerant," he said, according to an Al Jazeera English translation. There's a fine line, he said, between permitting free speech and allowing chaos to spread.

Yesterday's network disconnection was followed soon after by mobile networks pulling the plug as well. Vodafone confirmed in a statement that "all mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas." So did Mobinil, the country's largest mobile provider. 

Those outages come as four days of clashes between security forces and tens of thousands of protesters continued on the streets of Cairo and other major cities, despite an official curfew in effect Friday evening. Tanks have taken up positions around some TV stations and foreign embassies, and Al Jazeera English is reporting that the end of three decades of autocratic rule by Mubarak may be nearing.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech earlier today that "we urge the Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and to reverse the unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications."

"We think the government, as many of us have said throughout the day, need to turn the Internet and social-networking sites back on," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. He added: "Individual freedoms includes the freedom to access the Internet and the freedom to--to use social-networking sites."

Egypt's Internet connections aren't completely down: the Noor Group appears to be the only Internet provider in Egypt that's fully functioning. Cairo-based bloggers have speculated that its unique status grows out of its client list, which includes western firms including ExxonMobil, Toyota, Hyatt, Nestle, Fedex, Coca-Cola, and Pfizer, plus the Egyptian stock exchange.

An analysis posted by network analyst Andree Toonk, who runs a Web site devoted to monitoring networks, shows that before the outage, there were 2,903 Egyptian networks publicly accessible via the Internet. Today, there are only 327 networks.