Phone calls, offline maps: How the Bangladesh tech sector worked through an internet blackout

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Fahim Ahmed was working late at his office in Dhaka on July 18 when he realised the internet had stopped working.

Ahmed, the CEO of Pathao – one of Bangladesh’s biggest e-commerce, ride-hailing, and food delivery startups – was instantly alarmed. It had been a tumultuous day: Thousands of protestors had taken to the streets of Dhaka opposing reservations in government jobs. There were rumors that some students had been shot by the police. The government had temporarily blocked mobile internet across the city in the evening to defuse the situation.

Ahmed called his friends and colleagues to assess what was happening and quickly realised that there was an internet blackout across Bangladesh.

“We were stunned by the government’s response to the protest,” Ahmed, whose company handles nearly half of Bangladesh’s $5 million daily digital transactions and processes up to 200,000 packages a day, told Rest of World. “No amount of business continuity planning could have fully prepared an internet-dependent mobility and logistics company for a total shutdown of mobility, internet, and social media.”

Bangladesh’s tech industry faced unprecedented challenges in July after the five-day internet blackout was followed by sociopolitical instability, culminating in the ouster of the...

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