[Infowarrior] - Damaged Cables Cut Internet in Mideast

[Richard Forno]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080130/mideast_internet_outages.html?.v=5


AP
Damaged Cables Cut Internet in Mideast
Wednesday January 30, 4:09 pm ET
By Pakinam Amer, Associated Press Writer
Internet Outages From Damaged Undersea Cables Disrupt Businesses,
Personal Use Across Mideast

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Internet outages disrupted business and personal
usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East on Wednesday after two
undersea cables in the Mediterranean were damaged, government
officials and Internet service providers said.

In Cairo, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
said the cut of the international communications cables Flag and
Seamewe 4 had led to a partial disruption of Internet services and
other telecommunications across much of Egypt.

Emergency teams were quickly trying to find alternative routes,
including satellite connections, to end the disruptions, Minister
Tariq Kamel said.

A telecommunications expert at the Egyptian communications ministry,
Rafaat Hindy, cautioned that "solving this could take days."

TeleGeography, a U.S. research group that tracks submarine cables
around the world, said the severed lines account for 75 percent of the
capacity connecting Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries to Europe.

It would take "a few days up to one week before submarine cable
operators deploy ships to bring the cables up and fix the fault," said
Eric Schoonover, senior research analyst at TeleGeography.

It was not clear what caused the damage to the cable.

Schoonover said there has been speculation by others that an illegally
or improperly anchored ship caused the problem. Cables get damaged all
the time but Schoonover believes this was the first time two undersea
cables near each other were cut at the same time.

Phone lines in Egypt still work, indicating "network operators in the
area are rerouting traffic through emergency channels," Schoonover
said. He said alternate paths include going "around India and back
through Asia to the U.S."

Internet service also was disrupted in Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates, which markets itself as a top Mideast business and luxury
tourist hub. Both Internet service providers said international
telephone service was also affected.

One of the ISPs, DU, was completely down in the morning; browsing
remained very slow even after DU restored Internet service by the
afternoon.

An official who works in the customer care department of DU, who
identified himself only as Hamed because he was not authorized to talk
to the media, said the cable cut took place between Alexandria, Egypt,
and Palermo, Italy.

Although he was not in a position to describe the technical fault,
Hamed said engineers contracted by DU were working to solve the
problem. By early afternoon, the service was flooded with complaints
and had found alternative routes, but Hamed said "there is slowness
while browsing on the Internet."

There was no total outage in Kuwait, but service was interrupted
Tuesday and Wednesday. The Gulfnet International Company apologized in
an e-mail Wednesday to its customers for the "degraded performance in
Internet browsing."

In Saudi Arabia, some users said Internet was functioning fine but
others said it was slow or totally down.

Users in Bahrain and Qatar also complained of slow Internet.

Associated Press Writer Barbara Surk contributed to this report from
Dubai, United Arab Emirates.