February 3, 2008
An anchor snags two telecoms cables off the coast of Egypt
And the internet connection of everyone from India to Sudan practically grinds to a halt.
Sudan's internet service only started returning to normal yesterday, three days after the accident. Bloomberg reports the cable operators Flag Telecom Group are only going to be able to start making full repairs to the damaged lines tomorrow.
It has all been a brutal demonstration of just how poorly some parts of the world are served when it comes to basic communications - despite all the talk of the world wide web.
I am presuming that if there had been a similar accident off the coast of France, it would have taken just a few seconds for the internet traffic to be re-routed via the scores of other cables crossing the Atlantic.
GlobalVoices has a round-up of reactions across the Middle East.
"The real question is, how is much of the fastest growing economies in the world dependent on a single undersea cable? Didn’t anyone think of a redundancy plan which covers just such an eventuality?"
asks Mahmood's Den of Bahrain.
Meanwhile,the dream of a submarine cable serving countries along the east coast of Africa seems to be slipping again.
UPDATE:
The plot thickens - Five cables cut? Just what is going on?
Posted by aheavens at February 3, 2008 6:00 AM