Internet failure hits two continents

[Guest guest]

Internet failure hits two continents

 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- High-technology

services across large tracts of Asia, the Middle East

and North Africa were crippled Thursday following a

widespread Internet failure which brought many

businesses to a standstill and left others struggling

to cope.

 

Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage

apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

 

 

 

Industry experts are blaming damage to two undersea

cables but it is not known what caused the damage.

 

Reports say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the

United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and

India, are all experiencing severe problems.

 

Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel

-- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon

and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup

satellite systems in case of cable failure.

 

Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a

research company that consults on global Internet

issues, said the damaged cables collectively account

for the majority of international communications

between Europe and the Middle East.

 

Du, a state-owned Dubai telecom provider, attributed

the outage to an undersea cable cut between

Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Italy, according to an

internal memo obtained by CNN.

 

In India, Spectranet and Telecomasia.net, two large

Internet service providers were experiencing problems.

Reliance, a third major Indian Internet provider, said

it was not affected.

 

An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and

Information Technology, speaking on condition of

anonymity told AP it was believed that a boat's anchor

may have caused the problems, although this was

unconfirmed. Beckert agreed that was a likely cause.

 

The head of an Egyptian Internet service provider

called the situation a " wake-up call " for the region,

which he said is too dependent on underground lines

and does not have a strong enough back-up system.

Mohammed Amir, head of Quantum, an ISP in Cairo,

described the situation as " a major problem, " but

expressed hope that the worst of it is over.

 

The two cables damaged are FLAG Telecom's FLAG

Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a

consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications

companies, Beckert said.

 

He added the options while those cables are repaired

were re-routing traffic around the globe or using an

older undamaged cable that has less capacity -- both

of which would cause usage delays.

 

Kuwait's Ministry of Communications said the problem

could take two weeks to solve, according to a

statement carried by the state news agency, KUNA.

 

There were concerns in India that an Internet slowdown

could affect trading patterns at the country's two

major exchanges, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in

Delhi and the SENSEX exchange in Bombay.

 

Rajesh Chharia, president of India's Internet Service

Providers' Association, explained that some firms were

trying to reroute via Pacific cables and that

companies serving the eastern US and the UK were worst

affected, AP added.

 

Besides the Internet, the outage caused major

disruption to television and phone services, creating

chaos for the UAE's public and private sectors.

 

The Du internal memo called the situation in Dubai

" critical " and stated that the cable's operators did

not know when services would be restored.

 

" This will have a major impact on our voice and

Internet service for all the customers, " the memo

stated. " The network operation team are working with

our suppliers overseas to resolve this as soon as

possible. "

 

The outage led to a rapid collapse of a wide range of

public services in a country which proudly promotes

itself as a technological pioneer.

 

Sources from Emirates Airlines confirmed to CNN Arabic

that the outage did not affect its flight schedules --

a statement which assured hundreds of travelers

worried after rumors about the possibility of

rescheduled flights due to the faults.

 

However, Dnata, a government group in charge of

providing air travel services in the Middle East and

ground handling services at Dubai International

Airport, acknowledged facing problems because of the

outage, sources from its technical department

confirmed to CNN Arabic.

 

The outage heavily crippled Dubai's business section,

which is heavily reliant on electronic means for

billions of dollars' worth of transactions daily.