Posted on 02/03/2008 11:18:41 PM PST by Lorianne
NEW DELHI (AFP) - - Another Middle East undersea Internet cable has been damaged, adding to disruption in Indian online services caused when several lines were cut earlier this week, a cable operating firm said Saturday.
The Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner FLAG Telecom, part of India's Reliance Communications.
The company said on its website that a repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days.
The cause of the latest cable damage was not immediately known.
Flag Telecom owns another undersea cable which was damaged off Egypt on Wednesday in the Mediterranean. Indian media reports have attributed that damage to a ship's anchor which dropped on the cable.
On the same day in Kuwait, the government reported two cables damaged by "weather conditions and maritime traffic."
The cable damage has left India's vital outsourcing industry grappling with major communications disruptions and businesses saying they could take up to two weeks to return to normal.
It has also disrupted Internet service across the Middle East and other parts of South Asia.
A repair ship was expected to arrive by next Tuesday to restore the FLAG Telecom cable that was damaged off Egypt, the company said.
Smaller Indian firms will be harder hit as they depend on a single service provider, said R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India (ISPAI).
"But traffic has already started moving after being re-routed," Perhar said.
Around 90 percent of the services were expected to be restored by Sunday, the ISPAI said.
India's 11-billion-dollar outsourcing industry is made up of 1,250 firms that deliver services ranging from answering customer queries to processing credit card and mortgage applications.
The industry employs 700,000 people, serving clients mainly in the United States and Europe that sought to cut costs by farming out work to the country.
Boy, what games are being played out there?
Getting pretty accurate with those “anchors”?
I’ve seen several postings of the rumor type that the Kremlin is blaming US Submarines for the disruptions...
Could be B.S>, but who knows...
I also saw a neat show about the first transatlantic telegraph line, and how the first person to use it turned the current up too high and shorted it out.
Ping
It’ll take even longer now to get some guy named Habib who kinda speaks English and goes by the name of david on the horn when my DSL line goes down.
You think? It was difficult to tell I agree.
Drudge the link to this article up, presumably as new news.
They are reporting a FOURTH. A little too much for coincidence.
No telling what is really going on, and why.
Al Queda v. the Internet
Doesn't Pakistan have a diesel sub or two?
It’s definitely the 4th. There was an earlier thread on it.
There was also a news story somewhere that said only Iraw and Israel have not been affected, and that Iran is 100% cut off from internet flow.
“Al Queda v. the Internet”
More likely the Israeli’s versus the Interenet...
Have they taken delivery of those super quiet German subs, yet??
Sounds like someone doesn't like the competition, or just Hindus. Lots of Jihadies in the parts of the world where these incidents are occurring.
Why would the Israelis want to sabotage the Indians, one of their best customers.
Too much signal latency. Satellites are great for covering wide areas, but aren't good for anything that requires interaction. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit is about 22,600 miles above the equator. Even at the speed of light it takes at least a quarter of a second to send a signal up to a satellite and for it to be retransmitted back down to the Earth. Additional satellite relays increase the delay. Have you ever noticed how awkward live interviews are when there are multiple satellites relaying the signals? Fiber optic cables can send tremendous amounts of data even more cheaply than satellites, but they have a shorter path, so there is less delay between sending and receiving signals.
Geosynchronous satellites are placed at 22,500 miles above the earth. Traveling that distance takes significant time. The voice telephone routing rules only permit a single satellite relay in a voice path. Having a satellite both ways creates such a delay that it is virtually impossible to have a conversation without "talking over" the other person or resorting to ridiculous half duplex speech behaviors.
The large number of "customer service" boiler rooms operating in India would be impossible with only satellite links. Users are tolerant of delays when using a browser. It's an expected consequence of network delays and busy servers. The same can't be said of one-on-one voice conversations. It needs to have a full duplex feel with little discernible delay to be satisfactory.
They have 5 operational methanol driven subs with 12 nuclear capable launch tubes each. You can thank France for the design, tutoring and initial implementation in the Pakistani ship yards.
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