Fergie's Tech Blog

Damaged Cable Cuts Internet in Mideast - UPDATE [4]

An AP newswire article by Pakinam Amer, via Wired News, reports that:

Internet outages disrupted business and personal usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East on Wednesday after an undersea cable in the Mediterranean was damaged, government officials and Internet service providers said.

In Cairo, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the cut in the international communications cable had led to a partial disruption of Internet services and other telecommunications across much of Egypt.

Emergency teams were quickly trying to find alternative routes, including satellite connections, to end the disruptions, Minister Tariq Kamel said. But service was still slow or nonexistent by late afternoon Wednesday.

A telecommunications expert at the Egyptian communications ministry, Rafaat Hindy, said the government was "engaged in efforts to try and overcome the consequences of the problem" but cautioned that "solving this could take days."

More here.

UPDATE: 17:51 PST: Earl Zmijewski has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here. -ferg

UPDATE: 20:07 PST, 31 January 2008: The Renesys folks have a "Part II" on their blog regarding this issue now... -ferg

UPDATE: 11:05 PST, 2 February 2008: The Renesys folks also have posted a "Part III" on their blog regarding these outages. -ferg

UPDATE: 13:57 PST, 7 February 2008: The Renesys folks also have now posted a "Part IV" on their blog regarding these outages. -ferg

posted by Fergie @ 1/30/2008 11:54:00 AM