Cut Fiber: Internet Services in India and Egypt Disrupted
January 30th, 2008Via: Reuters:
A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday.
Egypt’s Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 percent of the country’s Internet network.
The ministry said in a statement it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal.
India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked 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,” Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider, said in a statement.
VSNL said its service had been “largely restored” by diverting to another cable.
India said it had lost more than half of its capacity.
“There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth,” Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India, told Reuters.
He told the Headlines Today news channel that a “degraded” service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days.
Chharia said companies, including some of India’s many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.
More cut cable:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080131/wl_afp/indonesiaquaketsunamiwarning
Indonesian tsunami detector ‘was severed’
A crucial part of a tsunami detection system placed in Indonesia’s busy Sunda Strait has gone missing amid indications that it was deliberately removed, an Indonesian official said Thursday.
The device is one of just four installed off Indonesia so far as part of a regional alert system designed to help predict the kind of killer waves that swept the Indian Ocean in December 2004
Hah. I guess all of us who have Dell, USairways, Earthlink and gawd knows whatever services US corps have oursourced to India are flocked.
Wowser.
Yikes! Who had the method, means and motive to cut the cables, or remove tsunami detector devices?
Ever been certified as a scuba diver? You can go to 120 feet for just a few minutes. Then it takes another 20 minutes or more to resurface without harm.
Is the HARP crew out there moving their Ouija board or majik 8 ball over the planet trying to figure out where to manufacture disaster next?
This cutting of cable was not an accident. Unless it was Ken Lay trolling on his submarine and happened to have another “lucky strike.”
And another …
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid=%7B1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9%7D
A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.
Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.