Middle East-Europe links hit by cable damage
Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were severely disrupted yesterday after at least three submarine cables running under the Mediterranean between southern Italy and Egypt were damaged.
While the cause and full extent of the damage remained unclear, the cables carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America and could potentially disrupt communications worldwide.
Telecommunication industry experts warned that the potential impact could be significant and noted that a similar incident in late January which affected two of the same cables took almost two weeks to fix and caused severe disruption to business and individual users.
Sanjeev Gaur, director of assurance at Mumbai-based Reliance Globalcom, which owns one of the three cables,said the failures had cut the flow of "data of various kinds" between Europe and the Middle East. He said he did not yet know when communications would be restored.
In January, two subsea cable systems were severed by an anchor 8.3 kilometers from Alexandria beach after bad weather forced ships to moor off the coast.
That incident brought down 70 per cent of the internet network in India and the Middle East and took 12 days to fix, said Jonathan Wright, director of wholesale products for Interoute, which owns and operates one of Europe”s most advanced and densely connected voice and data networks.
"The potential impact of an outage of this size cannot be underestimated – it is like severing a major artery," said Mr Wright. "In a global economy with financial centres based around the world, and an increasing use of outsourced call centres and IT departments, it is essential that companies are confident in their communications networks."
The latest incident is believed to involve the SMW4 and SMW3 cables, which are owned by international telecommunications consortia and the FLAG FEA operated by Flag TelecomFlag Telecom, a Reliance Globalcom unit.
Experts speculated the damage could have been caused either by a ship or by seismic activity.