Internet slowdowns in Egypt, India, cables cut
Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt, disrupting the world’s back office in India and slowing down service for some Verizon customers. One cable was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and the other in the waters off Marseille, France, telecommunications operators said. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other. Damage to undersea cables, while rare, can result from movement of geologic faults or possibly from the dragging anchor of a ship. Hundreds of undersea cables often owned and managed by international consortiums keep telecommunications running worldwide. A surge in phones and Internet connections in Asia and to new financial hubs like Dubai has increased traffic on many of these cables.
Most disrupted communications were quickly rerouted through other cables. “Some of our customers were impacted” by the damaged cables on Wednesday morning until the company rerouted traffic, said Linda Laughlin, a spokeswoman for Verizon. The company is building a trans-Pacific cable from Oregon to China, South Korea and Taiwan because it needs more capacity in Asia, she said. A trade group in India estimated that roughly 60 percent of the country’s Internet users were affected, but many large companies switched quickly to backup plans, and business was not significantly disrupted. One of the affected cables stretches from France through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, then around India to Singapore. Known as Sea Me We 4, the cable is owned by 16 telecommunications companies along its route. The second cable, known as the Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) System, runs from Britain to Japan. Similar accident happened last year when an underwater earthquake damaged many internet cables in Asia.
Source: NY Times
Comments(56)
that sucks good thing im in the us
That’s why having a satellite connection doesn’t hurt .. as backup. Damn i wish i had one ..
Too Bad
so the traffic to egypt is now routed through the usa’s echelon’s.
what a coincidence: 2 cables cut at the same time – distance 2000 km
Yep, now i know why my internet s.ucks big time for last few days.
Could not download any torrents.
Internet is not useful anything other than browsing,email.
the same thing happend in 2006 where the Flag cable was cut for three weeks, in saudi arabia internet traffec were rerouted on smw3 and 4, thouse were three weeks from hell
. yesterday both the Flag and smw4 cables were cut so you can imagine how slow the internet is now 
.
Just started Transformers HD DVD download a day before.
Will have to wait a month now if it remains this way..LOL!
i did notice the drop in speed in India last nite (about 15 hrs back) ……
my frnds isp sent him a text message about a cable cut…
this news is so old
I was blaming behenchod BSNL as usual [:)]
Well here, in America, I have had NO service interuptions. WHOOHOO! Fast internet FTW!
I want to post a comment here but I can’t since I can’t access the internet.
yea glad i live in the uk.. couldn’t live without my daily dose of rlslog
@11
“”behenchod BSNL”" haha..
yeah many here (india) complained abt the internet being down,,
i had no such problem ..
how da fk did they get cut by the way???
Conspiracy? Yes!
@ 15
Are you using Reliance Broadband?That one isn’t affected.
Only Bharti tel and BSNL are down.
I heard that the restoration works are almost complete.
It’s bull crap. Lost is going to be out soon and if I don’t get to download it I am goin to snap.
Internet seems to fine now though. Wonder how long it will stay like this
hay i need bitmetv.org invite or torrentleech.org invite
please invite me my email dedek.mraz2@email.si
when the americans invented the internet, they included redundancy and viability in their design, to cope with situations just like this.
am using airtel..n its workin pretty fine till today
)
yeah this sucks in here(India). I m not able to access my trackers to download anything
Airtel seems to be working fine.
yes , the last 48 hours sucks , but now its a little bit better in egypt
some the egyptian companies got alternative lines
(dont know exactly how they did it)
but internet is back in some areas in egypt a few hours ago
its too slow now but its better than nothin .
some news in egypt said that to reconect the sea cables , it will
take about 5 or 6 days due to the bad weather these days.
btw . dont expect me posting any movie links till they fix the cables , Cause this speed that running now really sucks .
I can view all other sites except some trackers now its better. But still i cant view my fav site
Teh internetz tubes are br0ken!
“I was blaming behenchod BSNL as usual [:)]”
lol, me 2 at first
it was the cloverfield monster that cut the cables
It’s the ISPs trying to slow down the torrents!
I live in India and was wondering why my downloads were so slow. good thing i read this otherwise i would have abused my ISP customer care guys.
PS: A shout out to All my fellow Desi Pirates.
I’m suffering from this right now !!
All of Saudi Arabia is complaining from this problem ..
Hope they fix it soon ..
the http://www.rapidshare.com via browseris very slow but i can certainly download from their servers with a premium account at normal speed! Any comment on this?
i am getting regular downloading speed via torrents. but browsing speed is down… cant get anything from any filesharing sites… especially since i havent got any premium accounts anywhere… #32 RS working ok on premium mate ??
I saw a news report,in which they said that it will take 2 weeks to get the problem fixed.
TWO WEEKS!!!Screw that ship,its anchor snapped the cable!
I knew we should’nt have messed around with those Egyptian tombs.
iam getting slow speed in torrent but regular speed in browsing.
i hope it would soon be fixed.
Rapidshare is working fine.
BTW Iam 4rom India & use BSNL.
Even Counter Strike sucks now with 350+ ping.
Well,atleast I am able to visit Releaselog.I’m glad I downloaded most of the good movies like Sweeney Todd,Jesse James etc.
Does anyone know about the upcoming R5 release dates?
@ 35
Are you able to check your usage at dataone site?
I am stuck at the login screen.
This was cused by a ship as its anchor hit the cable near the port of Alexandria egypt in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Egypt; A spokesman for Flag Telecom, the owner of the severed cable, told the Register: “It is a problem off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. For some reason ships were asked to anchor in a different place to normal – 8.3km from the beach. One of the ship’s anchors cut our cable but there are multiple cuts – we’re not the only company having problems.”
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/india_mideast_lose_internet/). Flag is now owned by Reliance Comm. Corp. of India. Damage to the Flag cable is being felt by 85%-90% of internet population eastern hemisphere! The other cable was not that important.
And this is a Scene release HOW!?
m also using airtel!!! n d dwnldn speed on torrents is f9…. onli SURFIN suxx…. itz takin too much tym to load images….
The cables were cut to install a hardware data monitor and filter
its so bad here in Egypt :S
internet has been down for 2 days, sometimes it works with slowest speed ever
Hope they can fix it ASAP
i live saudiarabia.
yesterday the internet connection speed went heavily down after been stable for more than 6 month .
the problem still here , i dont know why the net speed went down .
does the cable cut issue has an effect on the area where i live ?
Internet is back here in egypt now but download speed is very bad. I hardly get 10 KB/s and it’s not stable though
wah… desi bande bhi hai yah par…
im using bhenchod = Sify..
didnt face any prob..
getting constant speed.
im shocked….
The countries that been affected by the damaged cables:
Most middle eastern countries,,
Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, KSA,Kuwait,Oman,Uae,Qatar,Kuwait,Bahrain, Yemen…. Ect
India is connected through Oman, so they got the same problem
i live in saudi arabia the internet is back to me after tow days of bad internet and the browsing,downloading is ok it is about 170kb/s
Im in Egypt and barely can open google :/
Cool they have fixed it in India everything is working fine now!
still it seems weird to have two cable defects at the same day…
Another expat in India; connection is irritatingly slow today in office; same at home; can’t even open Rapidshare. By the way, using Airtel as home/office voice/data service carrier.
damn that bhenchod ship!!
sala madarchod captain ki maa ki gand mein danda!!
now they’re going to have to wait to download their camel porn lol
Here in Egypt, things have been crazy since this accedent happened, but it’s getting better now and we’ll be back on track soon, thanks for your continous support. this site ROCKS!!!
That’s a THIRD one been cut, and the news stations still haven’t told us what happened to the first two!
It’s the nazi American authorities that are installing monitor equipment.
hey! it happens that I am in egypt these days (luck !)
internet is almost back (but not for online gaming I believe)
I never thought that such cut would affect half of the globe…
that might trigger an idea to the bad guys so they cut internet .. life without elec. is hard and so is life without internet.
hope that companies now think of some kind of backup or use wireless tech.
I live in egypt.. anybody here(egyptian) has css coz am having serious problems with my ping in css after the cable cut off until now(internet speed is 512kbps) . Ping rarely 150-. Btw i play in uk servers, not very far from here :/