Fifth Undersea Cable cut in less than a week

Internet service in the Middle East remains critically disrupted as the undersea fiber optic cables carrying Internet bandwidth got snapped. This is the fifth such incident in a week, but the cause of damage is still unknown.

Egyptian Officials have cleared that ships didn’t cause the breakage near the port of Alexandria. A review of the ship traffic reveals that no ships were operating around the area at the time of the breakage. Ships have been dispatched to fix the undersea cables, but bad weather is slowing down the repair process. Internet service is expected to return to normal in another ten days.

According to estimates from Mahesh Jaishanker, Business Development and Marketing for TeleGeography, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”

This seems much more than a mere coincidence. I’m suspiciously wondering if this is some kind of sabotage. Let’s hope terrorism doesn’t come down to disrupt our commerce and communication.

[Via: DailyTech]

This post was published by on February 6, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com Saptarshi

    All of this is turning into some kind of a joke… I’m now starting to think that the News agencies in Middle-east are all reporting the same cut in different names and places…coz really 5 cuts in just more than a weeks time sounds impossible!!

    Mayb the Lockness has come to the Gulf and is hungry!!

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Saptarshi: I thought about the same, but then I stumbled across a post on Engadget. Even they reported the same! Guess, it’s some kind of sabotage by someone.

  • http://green-flamingo.com Nathaniel

    This is just crazy! I don’t think that all of this was by accident anymore. 5 cords or cables? To me that sounds insane for this amount of time. I hope the same as you do!

  • http://abhisays.com Abhishek Kumar

    Why it is happening again and again ? I also believe that it is some kind of sabotage. Are terrorists want to hit the internet industry ?

  • http://anirudhbhati.com Anirudh

    There have been conspiracy theories in the air for a while. Some say the sabotage was aimed to cripple Iran’s communications systems.

    I was unable to use the internet for two days, hardest days I have had in recent times. ;-)

    The offshoring business industry in India which serves as a back office for a number of multinationals and large corporations in the United States, as they were able to re-route traffic through the Pacific, reaffirming the position of India as the best offshoring destination in the world.

  • http://hifi-ring.com/ HiFi Guy

    A new kind of terrorism is born, the goal is to cut all major connection between the US and the middle-east

  • http://www.codenamesearch.com/upcoming.php Rapidshare search

    I wonder how much these cables cost? Could be someone stealing it for recycling :)

  • http://technolaziness.blogspot.com/ lucky v

    I hope that never happens in the future. I empathise with the people who were affected by disruptions. Its really tough to survive without internet once you are addicted to it.