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.
It’s either the Israelis or US.
Not necessarily.
Ask someone to flip a coin 200 times and write down each flip as head or tails. Ask someone else to write down heads or tails 200 times without actually flipping a coin. Compare the two lists to identify the one that was really flipped from the made up list. Invariably the made up list will have no more than 3 head or tails in row, while the real list will have at least one sequence of 6 or more heads or tails.
Most people do not understand that random events can occur in batches.
Good story - thanks!
Internet through satellites has got a high latency(response time) problem. Fibre optics is faster, and cheaper.
But it is not just the number within a short time span, it is also the location that is being effected. Or does that not make a difference?
I recall that as the best issue of Wired. Not sure what happened to my copy.
Thanks for the link.
I understand that now, it just surprised me that in an era of cell phones, wi-fi and everything else, that we would still have tens of thousands of miles of wires cirss-crossing our oceans.
Putin always needs a fall guy for something.
This is simply 2 dam much. Somethings up.
Here’s a great article from Wired magazine from a decade ago that covers both the modern laying of undersea cables and the history going back to the very beginning. Long but very interesting.
Mother Earth Mother Board
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html
And I’ve reposted.
I’ve still got that issue on my shelf. That’s a great article, for anyone interested in the history of technology.
Yes, the next phase of technology is light-based micro-electronic circuitry. Light is more efficient, faster, and does not heat the conductors, unlike electricity. The challenge is in developing a light-based transistor. Once that is done, traditional silicon circuitry in integrated chips can be replaced.
Fibre optics is going to spread all over, replacing the copper wires that exist today.
Fibre to the premises (FTTP), will be the new medium of broadband communication.
Here is a better-formatted version of the same:
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/OpEd/virtual/stephenson.html
An extremely interesting read. Thanks!
I had that ‘David’ guy!
He wanted me to reinstall my O.S. because a tree fell on the SBC lines!
If “David” answers just hang up!
Cables have two ends though, you can't hurt one end without messing with the other. I am thinking that Israel is getting worried enough about Iran to really do something about them, cutting Abdul off from his ICQ buddies must have something to do with it . JMHO - YMMV
IRANIAN SUBMARINES!!
..just guessing...
NOPE!
3rd was on Friday.
This 4th one was on Sunday!
Not in the news too much, I learned about it on another thread on FR, but Iran has been isolated since the fourth cable got cut. Every country in the middle east is affected EXCEPT Israel and Iraq. Could be Israel or the US causing this. My money is on Israel.
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