Ruptures call safety of Internet cables into question
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NEW DELHI: Four undersea communication cables have been cut in the past week, raising questions about the safety of the oceanic network that handles the bulk of the world's Internet and telephone traffic.
Most telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows what damaged the cables or whether the incidents were related.
One theory - that a wayward ship traveling off course because of bad weather was responsible for cutting the first two cables last week - was dismissed by the Egyptian government over the weekend.
No ships passed the area in the Mediterranean where the cables were located, the country's Ministry of Communications said Sunday.
"This has been an eye-opener for us, and everyone in the telecom industry worldwide," said Colonel R.S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.
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Today, the cause of the problem may have been an anchor, "but what if it is sabotage tomorrow?" Parihar asked.
"These are owned by private operators, and there are no governments or armies protecting these cables."
Most recently, a cable operated by Qatar's Q-Tel, which linked Qatar to the United Arab Emirates through the islands of Haloul and Das, was cut Friday.
Communications in the Middle East have been hardest hit by the damage, though India, the United States and Europe also experienced slowdowns.
Telecommunications operators have been trying to diversify the routes they can use for transmissions in recent years, said Alan Mauldin, research director with TeleGeography Research, particularly since an earthquake in Taiwan in 2006 disrupted service in Asia.
The cable network contains "choke points" - like those off the coast of Egypt and Singapore where many cables run - and operators need to make sure their transmission routes are diversified, he said.
Adel al Mutawa, a spokesman for Q-Tel, said Qatar was operating at about 60 percent of telephone capacity Monday, but that Internet and data transmission services were working at normal speed.
Most telecommunications companies affected by the cuts during the past week rerouted service through other cables.
Q-Tel will not know what caused the Qatar-UAE Submarine Cable System rupture until it sends a repair ship to pull the cable off the ocean floor, Mutawa said.
Undersea cables carry about 95 percent of the world's telephone and Internet traffic, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, an 86-member group that works with fishing, mining and drilling companies to curb damage to submarine cables.
Information travels faster and less expensively under the ocean than it does via satellite, and undersea cable transmission is gaining market share, the group said.
The Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said Sunday that no ships had passed through the area in the Mediterranean where two cables, known as the Sea Me We 4 and Flag's Europe-Asia cable, were cut earlier last week.
"The site is a restricted area, which excludes the possibility that the malfunction resulted from a crossing ship," the ministry said in a statement. Internet efficiency in Egypt has reached about 70 percent, the statement said.
A third cable, known as Falcon, was cut Friday morning about 55 kilometers, or 35 miles, off the coast of Dubai in the Gulf. Wet, windy weather in some areas around the Gulf has shut ports and delayed ships.
Two of the damaged cables, the Flag Europe-Asia cable and Falcon, are owned by Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group.
Flag Telecom has never had two cables down at the same time in the region, a spokesman, Vineet Kumar, said.
Flag Telecom's network is one of the "newest in existence" so it would be unlikely that the cables would break because of wear and tear or age.
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