On 1 February 2005, the Kingdom of Nepal cut off all public telecommunication links to the outside world. According to the king, the shutdown in communications was to enable security operations against the Maoist insurgents. Landline and Internet services were restored gradually over the following weeks. But the pre-paid mobile phone service, the service used by the majority of Nepalese, stayed off for the public for 88 days. The shutdown in communications provided the environment for a natural experiment to look at the impact of the mobile phone. Researchers conducted interviews in three regions of Nepal that are taken by the Nepalese as representative of the country. Among those interviewed were politicians, including the then-prime minister, business owners, journalists, as well as military and police officers. The study found that the shutdown in mobile communications had limited success in helping security operations. The insurgents did not trust the mobile phone network and had developed their own parallel communication network. The larger impact was negative: it hurt the economy and alienated large swathes of the public, perhaps even contributing to the downfall of the king. The study suggests that the mobile phone is a social device and that if there is to be any shutdown of the mobile phone service, it should be done only briefly and for very clear security reasons.
移動電話停運與尼泊爾社會經濟政治的衰落
2005年2月1日，尼泊爾王國切斷了其與外界的公共電訊連接。據國王的說法，關閉通訊聯絡是為了對付毛主義暴動分子而啟動的安全措施。固定電話和互聯網在隨後的幾周裏逐漸恢復，但被大多數尼泊爾人使用的預付費移動電話服務卻在停了88天以後才恢復。這次通信中斷提供了一個攷察移動電話影響的天然試驗環境。我們的研究人員在具有代表性的三個地區對尼泊爾人進行了訪談。被訪談的人員包括政治家（包括當時的總理）、商業主、記者、軍官和警官。本研究發現，關閉移動通信對安全運作幫助並不大，因為暴動者並不信賴移動電話網絡而是開發了他們自己的平行的通訊網絡。這次通訊中斷的影響基本上是負面的：它傷害到經濟運行，疏離了大部分的公眾，甚至可能促成了國王的下台。本項研究認為，作為一項社會設施，移動電話服務的中斷隻能是非常短暫的而且隻能是出於非常明顯的安全原因。
Translated from English by Xin Huang
Peng Hwa Ang