A preliminary investigation has linked the cuts to a ship's anchor that dragged and ripped into the two cables while the ship was anchored in an unusual location because of bad weather, officials said.

Repairs could take 10 - 15 days. Because two cables were cut, the normal rerouting of Internet traffic is more complex than if only one cable had been damaged.
Much of the Internet traffic between the U.S. and India and nearby nations that was normally traveling through the Mediterranean is now being passed the other way around the world,
crossing the Pacific Ocean, resulting in milliseconds of delay.

A Roadmap of Undersea SEA-ME-WE-4 Cable System



Impact to India

India's Internet service was disrupted by up to 60 percent on Wednesday because of a breakdown in an international undersea cable network, the Internet Service Providers' Association of India said.
"There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, the president of the association, told Reuters. He said companies, including among India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.
Another Middle East undersea Internet cable has been damaged, adding to disruption in Indian online services caused when several lines were cut earlier this week, a cable operating firm said Saturday.

Internet Backbone undersea





FLAG Outages

The Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner FLAG Telecom, part of India's Reliance Communications.
The company said on its website that a repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days.
The cause of the latest cable damage was not immediately known.
Flag Telecom owns another undersea cable which was damaged off Egypt on Wednesday in the Mediterranean. Indian media reports have attributed that damage to a ship's anchor which dropped on the cable.
On the same day in Kuwait, the government reported two cables damaged by "weather conditions and maritime traffic."
The cable damage has left India's vital outsourcing industry grappling with major communications disruptions and businesses saying they could take up to two weeks to return to normal.
It has also disrupted Internet service across the Middle East and other parts of South Asia.
A repair ship was expected to arrive by next Tuesday to restore the FLAG Telecom cable that was damaged off Egypt, the company said.
Smaller Indian firms will be harder hit as they depend on a single service provider, said R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India (ISPAI).
But traffic has already started moving after being re-routed.
Around 90 percent of the services were expected to be restored by Sunday, the ISPAI said.

India's 11-billion-dollar outsourcing industry is made up of 1,250 firms that deliver services ranging from answering customer queries to processing credit card and mortgage applications.
The industry employs 700,000 people, serving clients mainly in the United States and Europe that sought to cut costs by farming out work to the country.

FLAG Cable System

Labels: Internet, Technology

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