As you may have already read,
five undersea Internet cables have been cut or disabled over the past week or
so. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4)
near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai
coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria. The
first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag
Telcoms FALCON submarine cable which was not reported. This has not been
repaired yet and the cause remains unknown, explained Jaishanker. A major cut
affecting the UAE occurred on January 30 in the SeaMeWe-4 (South East
Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4). "This was followed by another cut on
February 1 which was on the same cable (FALCON). This affected the du network
majorly as connections from the Gulf were severed while there was limited
connectivity within the region," said Khaled Tabbara, executive director,
Carrier Relations, du. He explained that the network was re-routed through Al
Khobar in Saudi Arabia and was near normal now. Almost 90 per cent of Internet
traffic is routed through undersea cables and only 10 per cent is done through
the satellite. The experts also suggested that the cause of damage could have
been a ship's anchor that was dragging due to inclement weather conditions in
the region during that particular period.
This has to be intentional. C'mon, aside from the RIAA hiring a seamonster to
cut off music pirates in Iran, what are the odds that this is all random?
)