Remember Obama's "Kill Switch"

It should be patently obvious now why the only reason to have the ability to shut down the internet is to thwart the will of the people.
Here's the second time there's a lesson anyone with working synapses should ingest - in times of emergency the authoritarian mindset will want to make you more vulnerable and subservient.
When Katrina devastated New Orleans the first act of authoritarian mindset was to go house to house confiscating firearms.

The day that Egypt unplugged the Internet

"About a half-hour past midnight this morning in Egypt, the Internet went dead.

Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the Internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule, experts said.

Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major Internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the Internet to try and silence dissent"

Culmination of Romania's revolution