Communications widely disrupted in Bangladesh as student protests spike

In Bangladesh, violent student protests against quotas for government jobs, which have resulted in nearly two dozen fatalities this week, caused major disruption to telecoms on Friday ( Jul 19 ).

According to French media company AFP, 32 people died in the crime on Thursday. Reuters had reported that 13 people had died, adding to six sooner in the week, but it was unable to quickly confirm the higher figure.

Officials had cut some wireless services on Thursday in an effort to suppress the unrest, but on Friday night the disturbance spread across the nation, according to Reuters testimony in Dhaka and New Delhi.

Telephone calling from abroad were primarily no connected, and those made over the internet could not be canceled.

On Friday morning, the websites of various Bangladesh-based newspapers stopped updating, and their social media accounts stopped functioning.

A Reuters artist in Dhaka reported that only some words calls were received in the nation and that no wireless data or broadband was available as of Friday morning. Yet SMSes or mobile-to-mobile word messages were never going over, he added.