Internet crippled in India, Middle East
p2pnet news | P2P:- Net users in India are finding their online activities seriously curtailed by damage to a pair of undersea cables in the Mediterranean.
"An anchoring ship off Egypt’s Alexandria coast has damaged Indian-owned FLAG cable, and also SEA-ME-WE on Wednesday morning," says Sify, going on:
"Repair teams had already left for the site. A top official of Reliance group that owns FLAG said the repair will take around 10 days."
It could two weeks before normal services are restored, says Techtree India.
"Indian Internet service providers have put the disruption at 60 percent of normal services, while those in Egypt have put it down at 70 percent of normal services,: it says.
"The Indian capital almost but all logged out following the disruption, with Internet service providers putting it down at at least a 50 percent loss of service."
Apart from India, "Cairo suffered a partial disruption of Internet services and other telecommunications across most of Egypt. Internet services were also disrupted in Dubai in the UAE. International telephone service was remained affected by the cable breakdown," says the story.
"The majority of our IT companies, BPOs and call centers which are using the Atlantic route for dialing to the U.S. East Coast have been badly affected,” Bloomberg News has Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Provider Association of India, saying.
In the story, "It’s a national disaster,” says Joseph Metry, network supervisor at Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the biggest mobile-phone company in the Middle East and North Africa.
Adds Bloomberg:
Customers of AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. phone company, have been affected, spokesman Michael Coe said. While the company is rerouting its clients’ traffic, it anticipates congestion since other carriers are doing the same thing, he said. He didn’t know how many customers were affected.
San Antonio-based AT&T is part of the group that owns one of the cables, Coe said. AT&T had $4.7 billion in corporate sales last quarter, or 27 percent of total revenue.
Verizon Communications Inc., the second-biggest U.S. phone company, said some customers have been affected by the cable break. The New York-based company is switching those clients to other network routes, said Verizon spokeswoman Linda Laughlin.
Verizon also co-owns one of the cables as part of a group with several other carriers, and the companies pay regular maintenance fees that will cover the cost to repair the cable, Laughlin said. She said she didn’t know how many clients were affected.
Bahrain Telecommunications Co., which holds the franchise to provide all of Bahrain’s public telecommunications, said in an e-mailed statement that"Internet services will still be available but at a degraded speed during peak hours.”
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Sify - Cable damage disrupts Net services in India, January 31, 2008
Techtree India – Internet Hit by Cable Breakdown, January 31, 2008
Bloomberg News – India, Mideast Suffer Internet Disruption, January 31, 2008
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January 31st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I guess this is one way to prevent losing American jobs to slave labor. Hehe, this makes me want to buy a boat with a sharp anchor and a very long chain