Can a country shut down its internet for good?

Hey.

I don't know if you follow the news, but Ethiopia recently and bunch of other countries like India have the habit of shutting down internet in times of unrest and protests. I know pretty basic stuff about networking (as much as a CS bachelor degree is concerned) like an abstraction of how routing is roughly done. how countries and organization can restrict access to Autonomous Systems that they don't like (simple things actually in Network layer).

So my question is, what can be done to prevent governments who may shut down access? is satellite internet a viable thing (how about the delay)? overall, are there people doing things to prevent such catastrophic actions from authoritarian regimes?