FLAG Telecom blames abandoned anchor for Internet cuts

An abandoned six-ton ship anchor is responsible for cutting one of three severed undersea cables that caused Internet and Telecommunication problems throughout Middle East and India last week, FLAG Telecom confirmed Friday.

On February 1, the telecommunications company FLAG’s FALCON cable spanning Dubai and Oman was broken 56 km from Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman.

Flag Telecom said its repair crew of marine experts and optical engineers discovered the anchor near where the fiber-optic cable was severed in the Persian Gulf. However, it still remains unclear whether the anchor moved and sliced the cable or whether the cable itself was drifting when it was cut.

The communications company and its crew hope the repairs will be completed by Sunday, February 10th 2008. The company also maintained that its severed Europe-Asia Internet cable in the Mediterranean Sea that connects Egypt and Italy also would be repaired by Sunday.

Flag Telecom, the India-based company operates the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, a 17,500 mile long fiber optic cable which runs from the eastern coast of North America to Japan, said it will lay a new, much stronger cable between Egypt and France.

The India-based company said that new data link will also be laid on a different route. The new cable will be 1,900-mile-long and would allegedly take more than 18 months to complete, the company said.

"We are still treating this as a crisis," a FLAG spokesman reported on condition of anonymity in line with company policy. "But the new cable will provide a diversity in routes and be more resilient."

Just two days before the Falcon cable was broken, FLAG Telecom Europe-Asia cable and SEA-ME-WE-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4) cable that belongs to a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies were disrupted outside the Mediterranean coast of Egypt on January 30, causing significant disruptions to Internet and phone traffic in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and all of the Gulf states.

Meanwhile, a second FLAG repair ship continued work on these two undersea cables that are about 5 miles off the north coast of Egypt, near the port city of Alexandria, and run between Egypt and Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily. Repair work at both locations is expected to be done by Sunday.

India has reportedly lost 60 per cent of its bandwidth, and according to Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers’ Association, Internet service will still take a few days to return to normal.

Besides India, parts of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar are also suffering a huge impact as they continue to receive slow service. Internet users in Egypt have been requested to cease downloading MP3s or movies so as to ease the strain on backup systems.