Specialists question the Houthi version ... Yemen is out of coverage for the fourth day
English - Sunday 12 January 2020 الساعة 04:50 pm
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Yemen lives without internet access for the fourth consecutive day, amid conflicting information about the reasons for the service cutoff almost completely since last Thursday.
Earlier, the Houthi militia, which controls the telecommunications sector in Sanaa, claimed that more than 80 per cent of the internet capacity had gone out of service due to the interruption of a submarine cable outside Yemen.
However, specialists and activists have questioned the Houthi account of the reasons for the interruption of the internet service, accusing the militia of corruption and delay in paying the fees of the global provider of the service, as well as its tendency to put new restrictions on use.
The official Houthi account stated that "a large number of correspondent links to the Internet were out of service due to the interruption of the marine cable (Falcon) in Suez, which caused the interruption of more than 80 per cent of the international Internet capacities in Yemen."
Telecom professionals have ruled out the cut-off of the submarine cable as the reason for almost complete internet service interruption in the country, amid information that the Houthi militia has not paid the fees for the international provider, the Falcon company, which forced the latter to separate the service.
Activists accused the Houthi militia of seeking to isolate the Yemenis from the world through its successive measures related to Internet service, whether in terms of raising prices to more than 130 per cent or for the purpose of deliberately weakening the service.
Activists assert that the recent discontinuation of the Internet service has nothing to do with cutting any submarine cable, as such cuts would have affected other countries in the region, and the impact would not be limited to Yemen, as the Houthi group claimed.
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper quoted sources as saying that the Houthi militias cut off internet services in Yemen in order to install new listening devices for users, a process that needs some time to complete.
The Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Houthi government, Mesfer Al-Numair, announced an unspoken approach to reduce the use of Internet services, which sparked widespread discontent among Yemeni activists and human rights activists on social media.
