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| 4 Phone Calls Shut Down Egypt, 12 Would Come Close in the U.S. |
| Sunday, 30 January 2011 18:24 |
 "It can't happen in the U.S.," everyone's saying, after four official phone calls shut down Egypt's Internet in about 15 minutes. The U.S. is larger. It would take 13 phone calls and that would only shut down about 90%. Four calls - Comcast (17M), AT&T (16M + wireless), Time Warner (10M), Verizon (8M + wireless) - would take down 51M lines, 60% of U.S. landline and most wireless data. Four more - Century-Qwest, Cox, Charter, CableVision - would pull down 15M more, half the rest. A third group of four - T-Mobile, Sprint, Level 3 and Cogent - bring down most of the rest of wireless and the major backbones. All the major carriers have procedures in place for emergencies and designated federal officers they work with. Another two dozen calls would leave only a few percent of connections working.
It might take an hour to bring down 90% and a few hours more to reach 97-99%.
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| Last Updated on Monday, 31 January 2011 00:54 |