Mideast Web Woes Persist as 3rd Cable Is Cut

Repairs could take days or even weeks

By Laila Weir, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 1, 2008 1:18 PM CST

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Mideast Web Woes Persist as 3rd Cable Is Cut — An internet cafe is seen empty in Cairo, Egypt, Friday Feb. 1, 2008. A repair ship is expected to arrive next week to the site of severed cables off the northern coast of Egypt to begin repair work on the damage that has disrupted Internet services across the Middle East and India, a leading provider... (Associated Press)

A third cable carrying Internet traffic to the Mideast was cut today off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, and web and phone service remained disrupted in large areas of the Mideast and India because of breaks in two cables in the Mediterranean Wednesday. The cables severed earlier carried as much as three-quarters of the traffic between Europe and the Mideast, so their loss was more serious, CNN reports.

India’s major outsourcing firms said they were operating normally, but businesses and governments throughout the region have been affected by severe slowdowns, the Wall Street Journal reports. Most telecom companies have backup systems in case of cable damage. “It's just that in this case, both the main route and the backup route got cut for a lot of companies," an analyst told AP. (More internet service providers stories.)

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