Summary

  • On 16 May 2025, Cloudflare measured traffic drops of more than 50 percent against the prior week at four Libyan networks — AS329129, AS328539, AS37284 and AS328733 — with Awal Telecom recording a complete outage; Freedom House separately recorded a Tripoli shutdown of around 12 hours that month.
  • The Libyan International Telecommunication Company (LITC), which describes itself as Libya's international gateway, appears in none of those measurements, and no source held for this article attributes the cut, or an order directing it, to LITC.

A claim about position, not an act

LITC's own corporate description, captured in an archived version of its website in April 2020, states in Arabic that the company is affiliated with the Libyan Post, Telecommunications and Information Technology Holding Company (LPTIC), was established in 2008, is considered Libya's international gateway, provides international telephony, international data and internet services, and manages the international network ([archived LITC corporate page](" + "https://web.archive.org/web/20200429043107/https:/litc.ly/about-us/" + ")). The parent holding company's own site lists the Libyan International Telecom Company among its subsidiaries and states it was established in 2008, alongside Libya Telecom & Technology (1997), Aljeel Aljadeed, Libya Post, Almadar Aljadid and Libyana ([LPTIC subsidiaries page](" + "https://lptic.ly/our-companies/litc/" + ")).

A sector overview published by the British Libyan Business Association describes LITC as the LPTIC subsidiary that manages Libya's international telecommunications connections, with the General Post and Telecommunications Company providing fixed-line telephone and internet services and Libyana, Almadar and Libya Telecom and Technology serving the mobile market, where Libyana is credited with more than 50 percent share ([TBLBA sector breakdown](" + "https://brit-lib.org/paert-four-a-bite-size-breakdown-of-whos-who-in-the-libyan-telecommunications-sector/" + ")).

On the physical layer, the submarine cable database Submarine Networks describes Silphium as a 425-kilometre repeaterless system connecting Darnah, Libya with Chania, Greece — described as LITC's first wholly owned submarine cable system, with OTEGLOBE providing landing facilities at Chania and onward access to Europe. It gives an initial system capacity of 1.2 Tbps, supplier Huawei Marine (now HMN Technologies) and a ready-for-service date of January 2013, and lists Europe India Gateway, Italy–Libya and Silphium as Libya's international submarine systems alongside the domestic Libyan Fiber Optic Network ([Submarine Networks: Silphium](" + "https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-africa/silphium" + ")).

The public record on that cable does not agree with itself. Libya Herald reported in July 2016 that LITC dated Silphium's operation to June 2012, described it as the first international telecoms link for Libya's eastern region over 425 kilometres to Crete, and gave a current capacity of 70 Gbps expandable to 1.2 Tbps ([Libya Herald, 17 July 2016](" + "https://libyaherald.com/2016/07/silphium-marine-cable-repairs-commence-at-derna-landing-point" + ")). Those two figures — in-service date and capacity — are recorded here as competing claims, attributed to the publisher that makes each one, not reconciled into a single number.

A third announcement is operator-sourced: Telecom Italia Sparkle published a release on 3 October 2019 titled as a joint upgrade by Sparkle and LITC of the Italy–Libya bilateral cable to 100 Gbps technology ([Sparkle press release](" + "https://www.tisparkle.com/media/press-release/sparkle-and-litc-of-libya-upgrade-the-italy-libya-bilateral-cable-to-100-gbps-technology" + ")). It is evidence that an upgrade was announced, not independent verification of commissioned capacity.

What monitors measured on 16 May 2025

The strongest independent measurement of the disruption is Cloudflare's quarterly internet disruption summary, published 22 July 2025. It reports that on 16 May 2025 connectivity was disrupted across multiple Libyan network providers, reportedly in response to public protests against the Government of National Unity. Starting at 13:30 UTC — 15:30 local time — traffic dropped by more than 50 percent compared with the prior week at Libyan International Company for Technology (AS329129), Giga Communication (AS328539), Aljeel Aljadeed for Technology (AS37284) and Awal Telecom (AS328733), the last of which experienced a complete outage. Low traffic persisted until around 00:00 UTC. Giga Communication recorded a second disruption on 17 May between 02:00 and 11:30 UTC. The same summary records government-directed shutdowns that quarter in Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Panama, and none in the first quarter of 2025 ([Cloudflare Q2 2025 summary](" + "https://blog.cloudflare.com/q2-2025-internet-disruption-summary/" + ")).

NetBlocks issued a same-day alert stating that live metrics showed a disruption to internet connectivity in Libya, corroborating local reports of telecoms blackouts, and placed the incident amid escalating conflict and deadly clashes with protesters calling for the overthrow of the interim Government of National Unity ([NetBlocks, 16 May 2025](" + "https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/114519315998544167" + ")).

Freedom House's Freedom on the Net 2025 country report records a localized internet shutdown in Tripoli in May 2025 amid antigovernment demonstrations calling for the resignation of the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity. It puts the duration at around 12 hours, says most service providers experienced only partial bandwidth reductions while at least one reported a total service outage, and scores Libya 3 out of 6 on whether the government exercises technical or legal control over internet infrastructure for restricting connectivity over June 2024 to May 2025. The same report documents a July 2024 decision by the GNU-affiliated Presidential Council, Decision No. 14, establishing a Public Morality Protection Agency with broad powers to police social media ([Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2025](" + "https://freedomhouse.org/country/libya/freedom-net/2025" + ")).

The prior year's report locates domestic backbone control elsewhere in the same corporate family: it states that Hatif Libya, an LPTIC subsidiary established in 2008, controls the fibre-optic backbone network servicing Libya, and that the centralisation of internet traffic through LPTIC allows authorities to restrict the internet. It records that in September 2023 internet and telephone access in Derna was shut down amid post-flood protests, with LPTIC attributing the disruption to cut fibre-optic cables and saying service was restored within the day, while other reports say the Libyan Arab Armed Forces maintained the shutdown for four days; that internet access in Benghazi was shut down for over a week in October 2023 during a military operation; recurrent disruptions in Sirte; and a five-hour shutdown in Tobruk in August 2022 around Khalifa Haftar's visit, with no official explanation ([Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2024](" + "https://freedomhouse.org/country/libya/freedom-net/2024" + ")).

A separate monitor gives the baseline against which any future drop would be read. GeoCables lists Libyan providers with population shares — Libyana Mobile Phone (AS328286) 35.46 percent, General Post (AS21003) 21.31 percent, Aljeel Aljadeed (AS37284) 14.99 percent, Giga (AS328539) 14.28 percent and Libyan International (AS329129) 4.01 percent — and lists the cables feeding Libya as Europe India Gateway, Italy–Libya, LFON, Medusa, Silphium and Tobrok-Emasaed. It states plainly that its status is a heuristic rather than an official provider statement, and the detector log visible in the retrieved material begins 21 June 2026, showing only a 28 July 2026 degraded event; on that evidence it neither corroborates nor contradicts the May 2025 event ([GeoCables, Libya](" + "https://geocables.com/outages/ly" + ")).

The gap between the gateway and the measurement

Three things are true at once, and none of them closes the attribution.

First, the network named in the measured set carries two different names in two different sources. Cloudflare calls AS329129 "Libyan International Company for Technology"; GeoCables calls the same ASN simply "Libyan International". Neither source establishes that network's legal identity, and neither establishes its relationship — ownership, transit, or otherwise — to LITC. That is a naming problem, not a finding.

Second, every measurement cited here is of Libyan access providers, not of international gateway capacity. No source held for this article states that the 16 May 2025 disruption was implemented at, or caused by, LITC's international network. A concentration of international connectivity in one operator is a structural fact about where control sits; it is not evidence that control was exercised on that day.

Third, no ordering authority is named. Cloudflare attributes the event to protests with the qualifier "reportedly"; NetBlocks cites local reports; Freedom House does not attribute the order to a specific body. An accountability record without a named decision-maker is a record of effect, not of responsibility.

An older test of how long reconciliation takes

The one event in this record that is directly attributed to LITC is a repair. Libya Herald reported in July 2016 that LITC had begun repair work on the Silphium submarine cable landing point in Derna, and that LITC said the cable had been deliberately targeted and was damaged on 29 October 2013 ([Libya Herald, 17 July 2016](" + "https://libyaherald.com/2016/07/silphium-marine-cable-repairs-commence-at-derna-landing-point" + ")).

Read the dates plainly: damage asserted in October 2013, repair work beginning in July 2016 — roughly two and a half years in which an international link serving Libya's eastern region was, on LITC's own account, unrepaired. The purpose LITC gave the cable was to increase the eastern region's internet capacity and reduce its dependence on western Libya for telecommunications capacity. The sources held here do not state whether the 2013 damage was fully repaired after July 2016, and they report no measured traffic impact from it. The gap is a durability question that the public record leaves open.

What this article does not establish

  • The live LITC website could not be read through the retrieval path used here, which returned a JavaScript challenge shell rather than page text. LITC's self-description therefore rests on an April 2020 archived capture, and the live text may differ.
  • Current ownership, leadership and operational documents for LITC were not established from a primary corporate registry in this research.
  • GeoCables' visible detector coverage begins in 2026 and cannot speak to May 2025.
  • No statement by LITC or LPTIC about the May 2025 disruption was located, and no official body was identified as having ordered it.
  • A Libyan News Agency item was sought for verification but the specific post could not be read; a related agency item suggested a local explanation of power failure and destruction of backup generators for one station outage. That explanation could not be verified and is therefore not published here as a finding.

A reader should leave with the narrower, defensible proposition: Libya's international gateway is a single, state-linked chokepoint that says so itself; the country's recent connectivity disruptions have been measured at the access layer, under names that do not resolve to that chokepoint; and the operator's own documented repair record shows that damage to an international link in Libya has historically been reconciled in years rather than hours.

This article is linked to the directory entry for [LIBYAN INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION COMPANY](" + "https://btw.media/en/directory/libyan-international-telecommunication-company-ly" + ").