Egypt travel searches plummet as country enters web ‘dead zone’

Egypt has just shut down Noor, its last running public ISP turning the country into an internet dead zone.

Egypt has just shut down Noor, its last running public ISP turning the country into an internet dead zone.

According to effective measure chief executive Scott Julian, Noor, went dead at midnight Egyptian time. It had been providing services to the Egyptian stock exchange and major brands like Exxon Mobile and Coca Cola. 

The only other ISP seen active in the past 24 hours, as the country prepared for its biggest day of protests yet, belongs to the Egyptian ministry of communications.

Travel agents with customers and coroprate travellers still in Egypt may be able to communicate via land line phones but there is no guarantee these will work.

With the internet down and protests continuing, travel professionals are already feeling the effects of the unrest in Egypt. Skyscanner.net chief executive Gareth Williams said: “The long term impact on the tourism industry in Egypt could be huge.

“Although we would expect people to postpone or cancel any plans to holiday in Egypt over the coming months, searches for the summer months are actually the worst hit, with searches to Sharm el Sheikh down by over 60%, and this downward trend could continue even if the situation is resolved quickly.”

People using Twitter should be able to log on if they have access to a dial up connection. Others can use a new service provided by Google, Twitter and SayNow that allows Twitter access to a speak-to-tweet service.

Anyone wishing to send a message via twitter can dial +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855 and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required.

People can listen to the messages by dialling the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.