News: 5 undersea cables to Middle East damaged

[dracodraconis]

As of February 1, a total of 5 undersea cables, operated by two cable operators, have suffered faults that have left 1.7 million Internet users in the United Arab Emirates offline.  Telephone and Internet traffic to countries like Egypt, Iran and Dubia have been reduced by more than 70% according to some reports. More distant countries like India have experienced a 50% loss in bandwidth, affecting services like call centres. It is theorized that a ship's anchor snagged a cable during a recent storm... unless you prefer the many conspiracy theories that are emerging. Found on Slashdot. Edit: Check out siderea's post (http://siderea.livejournal.com/556026.html) for some interesting information on undersea cables.

Comments

[ancalagon-tb.livejournal.com]

It's troubling.

These breaks are somewhat rare, and to have 5 breaks like this within a week, due to separate incidents, seemingly to isolate one specific area?

The "non conspiracy theory" answer (random events) is a bit hard to swallow isn't it?