The Anatomy of an Internet Blackout
Uploaded: over 3 years ago; Last updated: over 3 years ago ; Date of Publication: April-2018
All India
2012 - 2017
English
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
With the government ordering frequent internet shutdowns, approximately $3.04 billion has been lost due to interrupted economic activity as India faced around 16,315 hours of internet shutdown during 2012-2017.
Research Report
We employ standard procedures such as the instrumental variable method to estimate elasticities for mobile Internet and total Internet use. The measured elasticities are used to compute the economic impact of each shutdown reported in India between 2012 and 2017. Each instance of shutdown is tabulated with details on regions impacted, duration and network disrupted (mobile / mobile and fixed line). We take advantage of India’s diversity and the availability of state level data to investigate economic impacts within India – between states for mobile only and mobile plus fixed line shutdowns.
