Posted on 01/31/2008 3:40:41 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI: Internet users in India struggled with slow surfing speeds and companies tapped redundancy systems to overcome a disruption to international connectivity. The problem was caused due to the breakdown of two undersea cables in the Mediterranean.
An anchoring ship off Egypt's Alexandria coast damaged Indian-owned FLAG cable and also SEA-ME-WE on Wednesday morning and urgent repair teams had set sail for the location. An official of Reliance group, which owns FLAG, said the repair will take about 10 days.
But some mission-critical operations can sometimes suffer. Wednesday's disruption in SEA-ME-WE and Indian-owned FLAG cables had not been resolved yet.
Meanwhile, BPOs remained largely unaffected. According to a WNS spokesperson, during the breakdown, the company managed to link up to the US pipleline for its UK processes thereby avoiding any downtime.
Similarly, spokespersons from TCS, Firstsource and Tech Mahindra said their operations remained unaffected.
However, business and personal usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East was disrupted.
In Cairo, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the cut in the international communications cable had led to a partial disruption of Internet services and other telecommunications across much of Egypt.
At the Egyptian stock market, IT department engineer Mahmoud Mansour said the disruptions did not affect the operations at the exchange.
Emergency teams were quickly trying to find alternative routes, including by satellites, to end the disruptions, said Minister Tariq Kamel. But service was still slow or non-existent.
Internet service also was disrupted in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf, which markets itself as a top business and luxury tourist hub.
International telephone service was also affected by the cable break.
Maybe we’re putting in a new tap.
What? Dell promised me 24/7 support!
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