If the internet goes down globally for even just a single day, it would cost $43 billion, with the US and China making up almost half of the sum together, which is $21 billion, a new report has said.
According to the VPN service provider AtlasVPN, if an internet outage occurs just for a single day, the US would alone face huge losses of around $11 billion. China is estimated to lose nearly $10 billion.
The UK would lose around $3 billion, and Japan is expected to lose approximately $2.7 billion. An internet outage in Germany will likely cost up to $1.5 billion.
Countries with Oceanic islands like Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Micronesia would experience the least financial losses if the internet shut down for a day. Specifically, these countries would not lose more than $50K, the report said.
Russia topped the list of losses in 2022, with an estimated $21.59 billion in income lost over 7,407 hours of blackouts that affected more than three-quarters of the country’s population, according to the report by Top10VPN.
India lost $184.3 million as a result of government-imposed blackouts that prevented more than 120 million people from accessing the internet.
Iran, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, and Uzbekistan were among the other countries that suffered the biggest losses due to internet outages in 2022.
Overall, internet shutdowns by the government globally cost $24.6 billion in 2022, up 337 per cent from 2021.