Submarine failure nobbles Arab internet

INTERNET DISRUPTION: Etisalat and Du said UAE residents could face difficulty accessing the internet and making international telephone calls. (Getty Images)

Residents across the Gulf Arab region had difficulty accessing the internet and making international calls on Wednesday and could face problems in the coming days because of damage to submarine cable systems.

UAE operators Etisalat and Du both warned services would be disrupted after two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria, on Egypt’s north coast, while the Bahrain Telecommunications Co also said services were affected.

The operators said they were working to minimise the problem, but could not give any timeframe for when normal service would be resumed.

Etisalat said it was "working closely with the administration, partners, and concerned operators, for urgent repair work to ensure that the links with major global internet hubs are restored at the earliest".

Du said: "We are working actively with the submarine cable system operators... to ascertain the reasons for the cables being cut, and they are working to give affected operators a recovery schedule."

In Egypt 70% of the country’s internet network was down, while India reported it had lost half its bandwidth.

The Egyptian telecoms ministry said it did not know how the cables were cut or if weather was a factor. Storms had forced Egypt to close the northern mouth of the Suez canal on Tuesday.

India also reported serious disruptions to its services and Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters: "There has been a 50 to 60% cut in bandwidth."

Chharia told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be up and running by Wednesday night, but full restoration would take 10 to 15 days.

"The big operators have transferred their small broadband connectivity through the Pacific route, and that's the reason there's no hue and cry in the country," he said.

AT&T said that a cable owned by a consortium of which it is part was affected. "We do know that one cable is disrupted," AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said, adding that the cable in question goes between France and Egypt.

"We are impacted on certain routes to the Middle East. The traffic is being rerouted," Coe said. "Multiple carriers are rerouting so we do expect some congestion."

Egypt said its call centres saw their services cut by more than 30% , and two Egyptian stockbrokers said market transactions were considerably slower and some international trading orders could not go through.

"It (the disruption) had a very negative impact on the stock market today," one Cairo-based trader said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "At times, we were trading blind."

Stock market officials were not available for comment.

Egypt's Deputy Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer, asked about the impact of the disruption on the banking system, said: "We are disappointed (with) the service and will consider alternatives for the banking system if this happens again."

In Cairo, much of the capital city was without access to the Internet for the bulk of the day, frustrating businesses and the professions.

"I can't do anything because I manage all my work by e-mail. It is very frustrating," said Egyptian lawyer Rebecca Mikhail. "As soon as I came in (to work) at 10 a.m. I didn't have access to the Internet ... If it goes into the next working week it is going to be a nightmare."

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READERS' COMMENTS

Disruption
Posted by Shefiu, Dubai, U.A.E. on Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 20:28 UAE time


There is a redundancy plan and rerouting kicking in.. which is why we can still access the net as we can at the moment.. under any circumstances we would have been completely cut off at the moment with 0 access...

true though as Karan mentioned earlier.. the network infrastructure here in the U.A.E. needs to be far more robust if it was to truely be a global economy to be considered.. even leased lines are far too expensive and working in Dubai Internet City and be told that 2mbps is the best line you can get is very much a laughing matter when other countries enjoy faster bandwidth and very nominal rates.. this though would be another matter altogether.

Dubai Govt
Posted by karan dodani, dubai, U.A.E on Friday 1 February 2008 at 16:42 UAE time


In dubai they will only spend in making buildings but they will never spend on building a strong internet infrastructure neither will have a back up plan for them. China and Japan provide Broadband bandwidth up to 100MBPS and UAE is still ar 4MBPS that too very costly. I think they should look at this factor since internet is a growing necessity.

Customer information
Posted by Chris, Ajman, UAE on Thursday 31 January 2008 at 09:10 UAE time


"In UAE atleast the customers know ..."

Well, my entire office was out of service and when we finally managed to get through to Etisalat, the Customer Servcie rep told us there are no reports of any problems an we are the only customer complaining. "It must be internal problem with your hardware..."

I have been Etisalat customer for too long to be surprised by this response...

Internet disruption
Posted by clydd, Dubai, UAE on Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 21:40 UAE time

Well it's nice that we were told about the disruption .. actually only via Arabian Business. But that does not answer the question, which is: 'Why isn't there any backup?' Internet access is not a luxury today, it's like electricity. There has to be redundancy built in.
If FLAG is down (I'm assuming thats the underwater cable that is affected) why isn't there a satellite fail over kicking in?

It is about time these measures are put in place.

Regards from Sunny Dubai!

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