Make Internet Blackouts Legally Hard: A Connectivity Continuity Regime for Bangladesh

Diagnosis

The risk is not theoretical. As the note records, in July to August 2024 Bangladesh experienced a shutdown of roughly 10 days in which mobile and broadband were cut simultaneously. That detail matters: a simultaneous cut of both rails removes the usual fallback (when mobile data fails, fixed broadband often holds, and vice versa), so a joint shutdown is a near-total information blackout rather than a degradation. It severs banking and mobile financial services, freight and export documentation, telemedicine, e-government, remittance inflows, and the ordinary commerce of a digitized economy, all at once.

The deeper problem is institutional, not technical. The shutdown was feasible because the legal and procedural path to ordering one is short, opaque, and reversible only by the same hand that imposed it. There is no published trigger, no independent check, no fixed expiry, and no requirement to disclose who ordered what and why. Until that process is constrained, the next blackout is a phone call away. The lead responsible body is the ICT Division (ICTD), which owns the connectivity continuity mandate and convenes the supporting bodies (Bangladesh Computer Council, Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority, Ministry of Science and Technology).

Recommended actions

1. Codify a connectivity due-process standard. Owner: ICT Division, via a binding inter-ministerial circular that fixes the legal procedure for any network restriction. Mechanism: a written, signed order naming the issuing authority, the specific legal basis, the narrowest feasible scope (geographic, service-specific, time-limited), and a hard automatic expiry that requires fresh authorization to extend. Signal it is working: every restriction, if any, carries a published order number and a stated expiry, and none is open-ended.
2. Ban simultaneous dual-rail nationwide cuts as a default. Owner: ICT Division, through a service-continuity rule binding on licensed mobile operators and broadband providers. Mechanism: a presumption against cutting mobile and broadband together at national scale, so that emergency-service, banking, and payment traffic always retains at least one path. Signal: in any future incident, at least one rail (mobile or fixed) remains reachable for designated critical services.
3. Establish an independent review and disclosure track. Owner: ICT Division convening the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Bangladesh Computer Council. Mechanism: a standing review panel that must receive every restriction order within a fixed window and publish a public after-action note (who ordered, scope, duration, justification). Signal: a public register of restriction orders exists and is updated within days of any event.
4. Stand up a connectivity-resilience capability inside the Bangladesh Computer Council. Owner: Bangladesh Computer Council under ICT Division direction. Mechanism: a dedicated budget line and unit that maintains a real-time outage dashboard, pre-agreed critical-services whitelists with operators, and a continuity playbook for banks, hospitals, and ports. Signal: a live national connectivity status page and a tested critical-services failover drill.
5. Make resilience a digital-economy condition. Owner: Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority with ICT Division. Mechanism: tenancy and incentive terms for hi-tech parks that require redundant, diversely-routed connectivity, so the export-IT base is insulated from a single administrative cut. Signal: park tenants report continuity commitments in lease and incentive agreements.

Sequencing (first 12 months)

Start with action 1: the due-process circular is low-cost, needs no new agency, and immediately converts an unconstrained power into a documented, time-bound, reviewable one. That unlocks action 3 (the review panel and public register have something concrete to police) and action 2 (the dual-rail ban becomes an enforceable rule rather than an aspiration). Action 4 builds in parallel, since the resilience unit and dashboard take longest to stand up. Action 5 follows once the rules exist, because parks can only be held to a standard that has been written down.

Risks and constraints

The binding constraint is political: a sitting executive rarely surrenders a fast, deniable lever willingly, so the reform must be framed as protecting commerce, payments, and exports rather than as curbing authority. The fiscal constraint is modest but real: the resilience unit and dashboard need a standing budget line, not a one-off grant, or they decay. Operator compliance is the third risk; the critical-services whitelist must be negotiated, not decreed, to be honored under pressure.

Bottom line

The July to August 2024 episode showed that a roughly 10-day simultaneous mobile-and-broadband blackout is procedurally easy, which is precisely why it is dangerous. The fix is to make blackouts legally hard, time-bound, reviewable, and dual-rail-prohibited, led by the ICT Division through circular, rule, and a funded resilience unit, before the next crisis tempts the next order.