As-Suwayda – Rayan al-Zaqout
The As-Suwayda province in southern Syria has been experiencing frequent and unprecedented internet outages since the fall of the Assad regime about four months ago.
The main reason behind this disruption is the attacks and thefts affecting the optical cable supplying the province, particularly in several areas of southern Damascus (surrounding the Convention Center/Deir Ali).
This weakness and outage create hardships for most local residents, especially students and teachers in virtual schools and universities, who rely on the internet for studying, conducting discussions, and taking exams.
Struggles in education and communication
Nadine Aslan, a teacher in the Private Virtual Global Syrian School, told Enab Baladi that the weak and intermittent internet has hindered the teaching plan, causing delays for teachers in providing lessons to students.
Aslan noted that teachers were sometimes forced to reduce school days to two days a week, which compels them to rush through lessons to avoid a backlog in the educational curriculum.
She added that this reduction in school days aims to enable teachers to adhere to the teaching plan and the schedule for conducting discussions and exams, but it comes at the expense of students’ understanding.
For her part, Haneen Shalghin complained about her inability to take her master’s exam in bioinformatics at the Syrian Virtual University access center in As-Suwayda due to the recurring internet outages.
She mentioned that the weak service was one of the reasons that led her to stop her enrollment in the master’s program, as she needed practical applications online for her field of study.
The same difficulties apply to the majority of students at the virtual university when internet outages coincide with their exam schedules.
Additionally, many families in villages and towns far from the city center struggle to communicate with their children studying in other provinces during periods of internet interruption, which has become a new source of anxiety for them.
On another note, the weak internet has also posed an additional obstacle for citizens who wait for long hours to receive their salaries from ATMs in the city of As-Suwayda, according to reports from the Suwayda 24 network by one employee.
This situation is attributed to the intermittent operation of the ATMs while dozens of citizens await their salary distributions.
Attacks on the optical cable
The director of communications in the province, Maysoun al-Shaarani, told Enab Baladi that attacks on the optical fiber cable are the main cause of the weak internet service and its interruptions.
She added that incidents of cutting the optical cable around the Convention Center south of the capital, Damascus, continue to occur at least once a day.
In discussing the proposed solutions to address the outages, she highlighted the necessity of securely closing the distribution rooms along the route of the optical cable to prevent such attacks.
Internet service outages have become more frequent in Syria since the fall of the regime. In January, the Damascus area and its countryside witnessed a general internet outage.
In February and early March, internet services were interrupted in southern Syria, particularly in As-Suwayda and Daraa. The Syrian news agency (SANA) reported at the time that the outages were due to “acts of sabotage.”
On March 25, the internet network gradually resumed operations after being down for hours across various regions in Syria, amid ongoing disruptions to the network.
The Ministry of Communications and Technology explained that the internet outage resulted from “sabotage” that led to the disruption of the two optical routes in the Maaloula and Hasya areas.
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