Renesys, a Web-monitoring service, reported Thursday morning that sweeping outages in Syria had shut down 92 percent of the country’s routed networks.

“77 networks experienced an outage in Syria starting at 12:26 p.m. local time on November 29. This represents 92% of the routed networks in the country,” Renesys announced.

Akamai Technologies Inc., another U.S-based company also confirmed a complete outage for Syria, according to the Associated Press, while activists in Syria reached Thursday by satellite telephone confirmed the unprecedented blackout, which comes amid intense fighting in the capital, Damascus.

Syria has partially cut Internet connections during its almost two year  uprising against President Assad but a nationwide shutdown is unprecedented.

The Internet in Syria basically depends on one domestic provider, state-owned Syrian Telecom Establishment (AS29256 and AS29386). They buy most of their Internet transit from Turk Telekom and Deutsche Telekom, with some contribution from PCCW, Tata, and Telecom Italia. Connectivity has historically come in over submarine cable from Cyprus; activation of new terrestrial fiber connections to Turkey have been delayed by the political unrest in the country.

Egypt and Libya both shut down Internet service early in their own uprisings last year. Those were seen as major steps, as is Syria’s today, if the Renesys report is confirmed.

Some Twitter users warned the Internet outage foretells an impending larger military action, but that has not yet been verified.

Syria is in the midst of civil war, with the Internet playing a key role in the uprising against Assad that erupted almost two years ago.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad has maintained tight control over information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Syria for many years, dominating key networks via government-linked service providers and engaging in extensive blocking of websites. The internet was first introduced to Syria in 2000, reaching only 30,000 users that year. By the end of 2010, more than one-fifth of the population was online.