Oh no, here we go again. Two years after a series of cable cuts disrupted Internet and telephony operations in Europe, Middle East and other parts of the world, the word comes of yet another outage. SeaMeWe-4, a cable that connects Europe to the Middle East, has been cut. In case you were wondering, folks from the research firm Telegeography in a press release said that there are only three cables that connect Europe and Middle East (SeaMeWe-3, SeaMeWe-4 and FLAG Euro-Asia) and they take pretty much the same path under the Mediterranean Sea and as a result are equally vulnerable. SeaMeWe-4 accounts for about 89 percent of the total lit capacity, and any outage means trouble. Etisalat, the UAE-based phone company and Internet service provider, says its network has been severely impacted by the cut.
Oy. Time to buy shares of Intelsat or some other satellite backhaul provider.
The British pioneered undersea telegraph cables in the 19th century (using gutta-percha insulation), as the telegraph was the central nervous system of the British Empire. They had the good sense to realize overland routes were safer, however, which is why they insisted on controlling countries like Iraq that were on the way of the telegraph route to India.
Yea. Thats wat my Bahrain based ISP told me. I called him as I couldnt play online on the PS3 and my PING had severely risen to 350ms.
They told me the problem would be fixed by the 25th of April (Sunday). Thats tomorrow. Are they right?