Much Of India, Middle East Loses Internet -

Much Of India, Middle East Loses Internet
January 31, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson

Two severed undersea cables in the Mediterranean have taken down the Internet in large areas of the Middle East and India.

If you live in India or the Middle East, there’s a good chance you’re not able to read this right now. Two undersea communications cables in the Mediterranean were severed yesterday, severely disrupting Internet services and international phone calls across the Middle East and India, the Associated Press has reported (and, incidentally, taking out quite a few of those Indian call centres).

It’s estimated that 70% of the Internet service in Egypt is down, and 60% in India. The damage could take up to a week to fix.

A spokesman for DU, one of the ISPs in Dubai that’s been affected, told AP that the fault was in a cable between Palermo, Italy and Alexandria, Egypt. In a statement the company said,

"We are working actively with the submarine cable system operators (FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4) to ascertain the reasons for the cables being cut." However, there’s no suggestion of terrorism. The current theory seems to be that a ship’s anchor did the damage near Alexandria.

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