internet in tunisia

Internet in Tunisia

Aymen [email protected]

@eon01

Social Innovation In A Digital Context

Mars - 2013

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International Carriers

SEA-ME-WE-4

SEA-ME-WE-4

Dubbed : SEAMEWE4

Cable lands in : Al Fujaurah (UAE) , Alexandria (Egypt) , Annaba (Algeria) , Bizerte (Tunisia) , Chennai (Madras) (India) , Colombo (Sri Lanka) , Cox's Bazaar (Bangladesh) , Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) , Karachi (Pakistan) , Malacca Town (Malaysia) , Marseille (France) , Mumbai (India) , Palermo (Italy) , Satun (Thailand) , Suez (Egypt) , Tuas (Singapore).

Will stretch about : 18800km

Have a capacity of : 1.28Tbps

In Service since : 2005

SEA-ME-WE-4

➔ The South East AsiaMiddle EastWest Europe 4 (SEAMEWE 4) is intended to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the SEAWEME 3 cable. )

➔ SEAMEWE4 carries telecommunication between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

SEA-ME-WE-4

➔ The SEA-ME-WE 4 is proposed and developed by the SEA-ME-WE 4 Consortium.

➔ The Consortium continues to maintain and operate the system. It comprises 16 telecommunications companies .

➔ In Tunisia , Tunisie Telecom operates , manages and administers this cable system .

➔ SEA-ME-WE 4 is used to carry telephone, internet, multimedia and various broadband data applications.

➔ SEA-ME-WE 4 has a faster rate of data transmission at 1.28 Tbit/s against SEA-ME-WE 3's 0.96 Tbit/s.

➔ A consortium of 16 international telecommunications companies signed construction and maintenance agreements for the optical fibre system

➔ The contract is being awarded jointly to Alcatel Submarine Networks, France and Fujitsu Ltd., Japan and the estimated project cost is of the order of US$ 500 million.

SEA-ME-WE-4

HANNIBAL

HANNIBAL

Dubbed : Hannibal

Cable lands in : Kelibia (Tunisia) , Mazara del Vallo (Italy)


Have a capacity of : 3.2Tbps

In Service since : 2009

HANNIBAL

Picture of Hannibal Subsea Cable

Dubbed “Hannibal”, in honour of the courageous Carthaginian general who sailed from ancient Tunisia to conquer Italy

HANNIBAL

➔Utilizing the resources of its parent companies, Huawei Technologies and Global Marine Systems, Huawei Marine successfully delivered the project in just eight months.

➔Tunisie Telecom has brought digital independence to Tunisia by landing the country’s first 100% Africanowned subsea cable in Europe .

➔The cable’s total capacity of 3.2 Terabytes per second is more than seven times greater than that of the consortium owned SEAMEWE4 cable that had been serving Tunisia previously.

➔This extra capacity will enhance Tunisia’s IP connection capacities.

➔Hannibal enable Tunisia to act as the internet hub for neighbouring North African countries.

Trapani-Kelibia (KELTRA-2)


Dubbed : TrapaniKelibia (KELTRA2)

Cable lands in : Kelibia (Tunisia) , Trapani (Italy)


Have a capacity of : 20Gbps

In service since : 1994

➔Telecom Italia Sparkle and Tunisie Telecom announce the start of operation of KELTRA-2, the new 10 Gbit/s system connecting Kelibia (Tunisia) and Trapani (Italy).

➔KELTRA-2 can be the pillar of the cooperation between Tunisie Telecom and TI Sparkle, enabling both carriers to have a leading role in the Mediterranean basin .

➔This new submarine cable built by Alcatel-Lucent is a 2 x 10 Gbit/s unrepeatered DWDM system allows Tunisie Telecom & TI Sparkle customers to have a fully redundant connectivity between Europe and North Africa.


Internet via Satellite

Internet via satellite providers are national and international , offer twoway satellite internet access for professionals and individuals.

➔ Afrique Telecom➔ GlobalTT➔ IsoTropic Networks➔ LAMIT Co➔ Orbit Research➔ Tempest Telecom➔ TS2➔ Tunet➔ TopnetPro

Internet Traffic

General Informations

➔ Top level domain (TLD): .tn➔ Access: Available throughout the country using a fibreoptic backbone➔ Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 12 (2005)➔ International bandwidth: 62 Gbit/s in 2012, 50 Gbit/s in 2010, 1.3 Gbit/s in 2006➔ Internet users: 4,196,564 (2012),[11] 840,000 (2005); 410,000 (2001)➔ Internet penetration: 39.1% (2011), 36.8% (2010), 17.1% (2007), 9.7% (2005), 2.8% (2000)➔ Fixed (wired) Internet subscriptions: 604,102 (2011); 543,290 (2010); 253,149 (2007); 150,220 (2005); 36,657 (2000)➔ Broadband Internet subscribers: 544,392 or 5.1% (2011),[14] 481,810 or 4.6% (2010), 372,818 or 3.6% (2009), 43,845 or 0.4% (2006)➔ Facebook subscribers: 2,602,640 (2011)➔ Facebook penetration: 24.5% (2011)➔ Public CyberCafés: 350 (2005)

Major ISP

Public ISP :➔Tunisian Internet Agency;➔Computing center El Khwarizmi;➔Informatics Centre of the ministry of public health;➔National Institute of office automation and personal computers;➔Institution of research and higher agricultural education➔Defense ISP ;

Private ISP :➔GlobalNet ;➔HexaByte ;➔Orange ;➔Topnet ;➔Tunet ;

Major ISP

Key Events

The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI)

ATI , New Challenges

GlobalNet

➔GlobalNet, more commonly known Gnet is a provider of Internet access in Tunisia.

➔One of the two historical suppliers, since it has obtained the license of Internet in 1997 .

➔Owned by the technologyoriented group 3S (Standard Sharing Software)

➔Gnet aims to provide services for individuals and professionals: individual subscriptions, professionals dedicated access , ADSL access, VPN and hosting web servers.

Orange Tunisia

➔Orange Tunisia is the second largest private telecommunications operator

➔It is also the first in terms of license to operate a 3G network

➔Orange Tunisia broke the monopoly of Tunisie Telecom in fixed telephony .

➔It is the result of an alliance between Orange SA (49%) and Investec (51%), owned by Mabrouk Group and led by Marouane Mabrouk soninlaw of former President Zine elAbidine Ben Ali.

➔Following the fall of the regime of President Ben Ali in January 2011, a controversy was born in late February on the conditions for granting the operator of the license for the 3G network.

➔Although the direction denies , the 51% owned by Investec are confiscated by the State on March 29 of the same year.

HexaByte

➔The company Hexabyte was created in 2001 as a limited company under Tunisian law with an initial capital of 280 000 Tunisian Dinar , which is passed to end 2010 to 1,750,000 Tunisian Dinar.

➔Hexabyte is mainly controlled by the family Hidoussi .

➔Since its inception, the company was managed by the CEO Naceur Hidoussi.

➔The activity of the company as Internet Service Provider "ISP" is governed by the Telecommunications Code.

Tunet

➔Tunet abbreviation of Tunisia Network is an ISP, hosting and Internet services in Tunisia.

➔It is an affiliate of the private telecommunications operator Tunisiana.

Internet Use

➔Tunisia has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures in North Africa with broadband prices among the lowest in Africa.

➔In March 2010 there were 3,600,000 Internet users, 33.9% of the population, up from 9.3% in 2006. (Internet World Stats)

➔In June 2012 there were 4,196,564 Internet users which means 39.1% of the population (International Telecommunication Union) .

➔This compares favorably with the world average of 30.2%, the African average of 11.4%, and the Middle East average of 31.7%.

➔84% of Internet users accessed the Internet at home, 75.8% at work, and 24% use public Internet cafés

➔There are also 281 publinets (public Internet access) spread over the whole territory .

➔In June 2011 , there were 2,602,640 Facebook users for a 24.5% penetration rate.

➔This compares well with the 10.3% rate for the world as a whole, 3.0% for Africa, and the 7.5% rate for the Middle East.

➔In December 2012 , there were 3,328,300 Facebook subscribers .

Internet Use

Facebook Users & Demography for Tunisia (2013)

Internet Use

Internet Use

User age distribution on Facebook in Tunisia / Male/Female User Ratio on Facebook in Tunisia

Internet Use

Number of subscriptions to the Internet

Internet Use

Number of public Internet cafés

Internet Use

Number of websites

Internet Use

Number of computers per 100 inhabitants

Top 10 visited Websites➔Facebook

➔YouTube

➔Google.tn

➔Google.com

➔Google.fr

➔Blogspot.com

➔Tunisiasat.com

➔Yahoo.com

➔Wikipedia.org

➔Babylon.com

(According to Alexa)

Top 10 Tunisian Media Sites➔Mosaiquefm.net

➔Shemsfm.net

➔Attounissia.com.tn

➔Jawharafm.net

➔Businessnews.com.tn

➔Tuniscope.com

➔Tunivisions.net

➔Ettounsiyatv.com

➔Assabahnews.tn

➔Aljarida.com.tn

(According to Alexa)

Censorship - The Ben Ali Regime


Via Freedom House


➔Web filtering in Tunisia was achieved through the use of a commercial software program, SmartFilter, sold by U.S.based company Secure Computing.

➔All fixedline Internet traffic passed through facilities controlled by ATI, the government was able to load the software onto its servers and filter content consistently across Tunisia’s eleven ISPs.

➔Tunisia purposefully hid the filtering from Internet users by displaying the standard 404 “File Not Found” error message, which gives no hint that the requested site is being blocked.

➔A transparent proxy processed every HTTP request sent out and filtered out sites based on host names.

➔Many web sites of political opposition groups were filtred and blocked .

Web sites that criticize Tunisia's human rights record , were blocked.


➔Many websites/protocol/services were temporarily or permanently blocked :

➔ Facebook , Dalymotion , Wikipedia , Blip , WatTv , Al Jazeera , Rue89 , 20minutes ,Le Post ,Libération ,Youtube , Metacafe.com, Agoravox.fr , Flicker .. etc

➔ More than 100 Facebook profile .

➔ Twitter accounts .

➔ SMTP protocol , systems such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) .

➔ Mass Gmail Phishing .

Case Study : Mass Gmail Phishing


DNS spoofing (or DNS cache poisoning) is a computer hacking attack, whereby data is introduced into a Domain Name System (DNS) name server's cache database, causing the name server to return an incorrect IP address, diverting traffic to another computer (often the attacker's).

Access to the secure version of Gmail was censored.


EasyPHP was used to run a fake Gmail.


➔The hacking method was basically :

➔ Block access to the secure Gmail so that Tunisians are required to sign in via a nonsecure Gmail.

➔ Divert them to a machine running a fake Gmail login page under EasyPHP, to steal their passwords .

➔ Later, when needed, hack their email accounts.

Censorship Following the Revolution

➔Internet censorship in Tunisia significantly decreased in January 2011, following the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as the new acting government removed filters on social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

➔After the Tunisian revolution greater freedom of expression online was established .

➔In March 2011, Reporters Without Borders moved Tunisia from its "Internet enemies" .

➔In 2012 the OpenNet Initiative found no evidence of Internet filtering in the political, social, conflict/security, and Internet tools areas.

➔In 2011 Reporters Without Borders listed Tunisia as "Under Surveillance" .


➔In May the Permanent Military Tribunal of Tunis ordered four Facebook pages blocked for attempting "to damage the reputation of the military institution .

➔On May 26 a group of lawyers obtained a court order forcing the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) to block porn sites

➔The ATI is undergoing an appeals process with country's highest court on the grounds that it cannot uphold the ruling because it lacks the financial and technical means to implement a sufficient filtering and censorship system.

➔Despite the country's latest Internet policy reforms, censorship is allegedly enacted upon media activists that fail to comply with Jebali Cabinet member’s ideals of Tunisian “tradition” and “culture.”

Future of Censorship ?

➔The amount of threats, incitements, disinformation and false propaganda has increased especially on Facebook .

➔ Mars 2013 : The creation of the Technical Agency for Telecommunications .

➔The project is the result of governmental discussions since December 2012 .

➔The result : A suggestion from the minister of interior to create a specialized agency in the fight against Internet crime.

➔A possible return of Ammar 404 (?)

➔To be continued ..

http://www.cablemap.info/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4#Management_and_administrationhttp://www.seamewe4.com/inpages/about_sea_me_we_4.asphttp://www.gawkwire.com/technology/new_subsea_cable_brings_digital_independence_to_tunisia.htmlhttp://www.huaweimarine.com/marine/marine/commonWeb.do?method=showContent&webId=272http://www.slideshare.net/mchakchouk/ati-ab1103102011-9547841 (20,21,22,23 - M. Chakchouk Keynote at the 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Tunisia#Internethttp://www.tekiano.com/net/actu/5488leschiffresdelinternettunisien.htmlhttp://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/07/05/massgmailphishingintunisia/http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom%20OnThe%20Net_Full%20Report.pdf

Webography

Thanks ..

Aymen [email protected]

twitter.com/eon01

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Internet in Tunisia

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internet in tunisia

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