Med Internet Cable Gone Again

Another big internet outage with sub-marine damage in the Med.

http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2008/12/2008122034713611434.html

Quote :

About 80 per cent of Egypt's capacity and 65 per cent of services between Europe and India were interrupted.

Facilities to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan were affected, with the extent of outages depending on the service provider.

The reason for the three cable breaks was unknown, French Telecom, one of the service providers concerned, said on Saturday.

"The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear," the company said in a statement.

It was thought unlikely that an attack was the cause of the disruption, rather the cables may have been caught in trawlers' nets or an underwater landslide may have occurred, a spokesperson later said.

How dependent are we on cables these days? This seems to happen the whole time in the Middle East and Egypt (this is the second time in December) but never seems to happen in Western or Northern Europe.

Its the cables under the Med that keep getting broken.

I know... Egypt is on the Med... my question is how dependent are we on such cables these days and thus how possible is it that the same thing could happen to us.

johnfás wrote:

I know... Egypt is on the Med... my question is how dependent are we on such cables these days and thus how possible is it that the same thing could happen to us.

I'll make a stab at this: there are only undersea cable connections between this island and the rest of the internet ... for the general populace anyhow or unless you want to spend a fortune on satellite.

Cool, just wondered whether Eircom would get much of their connectivity through space or whether it was still all cabled.

If the Med cables are cut, I guess our connections with Saudi Arabia, India and the Far East are slowed down.

Telephone to Saudi was fine today anyway... we were ringing someone with Christmas greetings. Getting through to Canada was an altogether different story - took aaaaaaaaages.