Broken underwater cables sever global communications
Friday, December 19, 2008 @ 5:25pm
Broken underwater cables sever global communications
International Internet and phone communications have been severely affected between Europe, the Middle East and Asia due to a break in three underwater optical fibre cables, according to a Friday BBC Newsreport. The three cables normally carry 90 percent of phone and Internet traffic to the Middle East and 65 percent of traffic to India, with services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan also taking a big hit. Experts warn the disruption will have serious consequences on regional economies.
Thus far, the cause of the break is unknown, though seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before communications went down. The report states the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines are severed, which are located near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt and run across the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. France Telecom said it is unclear what caused the break, but it sent out a ship to fix the line between Italy and Egypt, though the fix could take until December 31st. A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable located about 80 miles away from Sicily. Interoute manages part of the optical fibre network.
While the issue does not directly affect North America, access to certain websites based in the affected regions may be restricted or unusually slow.
The same lines off the Egyptian coast were also broken earlier this year, prompting many in the industry to express concerns over its safety. If the fourth cable breaks before repairs can be made, there will be a total communications blackout of the Middle East, the report maintains.
Likely intentional. Google the subject and you'll sense a pattern of cable disruption in the Med and Indian Ocean. Cables are not hard to find as they are charted to deter commercial fishing in their area.
Now who do you think might have the resources (submarines) and the inclination to be testing whether they can black out communications throughout the entire Middle East?
...the US is a leader in international aid to the exclusion of the needs of its own underprivileged. Our own economy is in the toilet, we're shipping money and supplies by the boatload overseas, our troops are dying daily in support of humanitarian rights and you have the audacity to point your finger at our government for a seismic event. Good thing YOUR rights are protected by the constitution and government of the nation you are so callously accusing.
Once again, the idiotic conspiracy theories rear their heads. No, this was not the US. Not one undersea cable expert believes this was intentional, nor did they last time there were outages affecting the mideast region.
An undersea cable outage (due to a physical cut, equipment failure, ocean conditions, or other issue) happens on average once a week, and sometimes a confluence of events can lead to multiple failures and widespread outages.
There are flotillas of ships that do nothing but repair undersea cables. This conspiracy theory came up the last time we had undersea cable outages affecting the mideast, and if that's what you want to believe, nothing will be likely to change your mind.
will not help. The fact is the cables are down. What are the alternatives. Frankly it is time the world was connected through a different route - Alaska, Russia, China, Singapore etc. And the fallback should be repurposing and using the Iridium satellites.
Whether the cables are broken by seismic activity, or by trawlers or intentional a good business would always try to look at alternatives with a good disaster recovery plan.
Typical Americans, you just learn about a few countries then find out there are actually even more countries.
I can assure you that none of this has affected New Zealand where I live and I've heard nothing about this from Australia so I'm picking most of the Southern Hemisphere wasn't touched by this outage.
This all leads to the point that the outage wasn't GLOBAL because for that to happen the entire WORLD would have to have been taken down.
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