Third undersea cable cut off disrupts web access

Internet service disrupted for the third time within three days in some parts of Middle East and Asia when a third undersea cable have been reported to cut on Friday.

Earlier on Wednesday two breaks were noticed in internet traffic carrying cables deep under Mediterranean Sea, which resulted about 60% traffic slow down in web access in India and 80% in Egypt.

Internet service providers are trying to restore the entire service within a couple of days. Though the Wednesday cut holds back both government and private sector operation on a large scale, the new cut is expected to bring more loss.

Meanwhile, the recent cut is yet to be confirmed but reportedly a repair ship has been sent to the site somewhere near Dubai.

In India traffic was re-routed in most parts though the web, however access is comparatively slow. According to official source of FLAG Telecom, who owns these cables said that it needed more time in complete repairing of cable. Also the company has not clarified about the cause of such damage.

Bandwidth providers are now saying that it may take around 10 days to restore normalcy but it will be interesting to see what exactly caused damage in those undersea fibre optic cables.

Impact

The earlier two cut off have certainly left high loss in Indian business especially the growing outsourcing industry as faced hindrance to meet the service requirements of its clients based in UK and US.

Apart from, Internet service slowed down too had snapped government and banking service. At individual level this too had caused anger and disappointment for not being able to access the Internet quickly.

With the present Internet crisis what we all came to know is that the modern Internet power that connects the whole world still depends on physical cable negating our knowledge that it all depends on wireless and satellite.

Under such circumstances what is the necessity to have extra lines of cable and a well constructed plan that can provide backup facility to such immediate crisis. However, it too showed a great level of global interdependence.