Internet cable cut causing a massive network slowdown
Internet services have broken down across parts of the Middle East and India, due to damage of an undersea cable in the Mediterranean. Egypt’s Telecommunications Ministry claims the damage caused disruption to around 70% of the country’s internet network. The ministry says it has no knowledge of how the cable was cut, but that service would probably take several days to return to normal.
India has also reported serious disruptions to its services, claiming to have lost around half of its capacity. One Indian ISP is already linking the problem to the Egyptian outage.
“There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India,” says Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider.
VSNL says its service has been “largely restored” by diverting to another cable. However, a spokesperson for India’s ISPs says the country is likely to receive a “degraded” service for the next 10 to 15 days, while repairs are underway.
Disruptions have also been reported in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
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NEW DELHI — Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt, disrupting the world’s back office in India and slowing down service for some Verizon customers.
One cable was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and the other in the waters off Marseille, France, telecommunications operators said. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other. Damage to undersea cables, while rare, can result from movement of geologic faults or possibly from the dragging anchor of a ship.
Hundreds of undersea cables often owned and managed by international consortiums keep telecommunications running worldwide. A surge in phones and Internet connections in Asia and to new financial hubs like Dubai has increased traffic on many of these cables.
Most disrupted communications were quickly rerouted through other cables.
“Some of our customers were impacted” by the damaged cables on Wednesday morning until the company rerouted traffic, said Linda Laughlin, a spokeswoman for Verizon. The company is building a trans-Pacific cable from Oregon to China, South Korea and Taiwan because it needs more capacity in Asia, she said.
A trade group in India estimated that roughly 60 percent of the country’s Internet users were affected, but many large companies switched quickly to backup plans, and business was not significantly disrupted. India is the primary customer service center for many American and European financial services companies, and Indian companies handle back-office operations for many of the world’s largest corporations.
“In some way or another every company took a hit,” said R S Parihar, an executive with the Internet Services Provider’s Association in India. Internet traffic heading east from India was disrupted, and many companies rerouted their Internet traffic to the west instead, he said.
“In the case where people had only one route they were in trouble,” said Mr. Parihar. Smaller companies, or those that did all their business with countries east of India, were the most affected, he said.
One of the affected cables stretches from France through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, then around India to Singapore. Known as Sea Me We 4, the cable is owned by 16 telecommunications companies along its route.
The second cable, known as the Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) System, runs from Britain to Japan.
Ashutosh Sharma, a spokesman for Bharti Communications, one of India’s largest telecommunications companies, said the company had “taken significant steps to ensure that services are available by routing traffic through alternative paths.” Bharti was working closely with the cable operators to “restore normalcy as soon as possible,” he said.
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