It’s been a rough couple of weeks in Egypt politics, with a nation at unrest, a world wondering at their government’s shut-off communication tactics, and a revolution that’s clearly under way.  We’ve been covering the story from early on, particularly from the web access perspective, discussing the ramifications of an entire people looking for ways to communicate on a global scale.  Well, the Internet has been turned back on in Egypt, marking the end of a dark period, and the beginning of an  unknown chapter in their political journey.

According to All Things D, Research firm Renesys reports that at about 4:30 AM New York time, the US Embassy in Cairo and the Egyptian Stock Exchange websites as well as others have been restored. PCMag also reports all Egypt ISPs are now all back up and running, saying:

“The major ISPs – Telecom Egypt, Raya/Vodafone, Link Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and Internet Egypt – have restored service. Ironically, Noor Group, which was able to maintain service in the country until Monday – was the last ISP to come back online, around 12:52pm [GMT+2] according to Renesys.”

Egypt’s internet connection went out on Thursday night, and the rebooted Egyptian global routing table is smaller than it was a week ago. Nevertheless, messages on @Speak2Tweet  have soared to over 1,100 in matter of hours. @Speak2Tweet is a joint effort launched by Google, SayNow (which it recently acquired) and Twitter, which we covered extensively here.

Egypt may have internet access, but that doesn’t mean the grid is completely up and running. MSNBC reports a few large network blogs belonging to the Egyptian Universities Network (AS2561) are still missing, including the .eg top level domain servers’ address space.

The Egypt turbulence certainly showed its effects, and SiliconANGLE gave the Cloud Angle on the internet blackout first hand right when it happened.

[image credit: derstandard]