Internet has been disrupted in India, Egypt and Gulf Arab countries. This is due to a ship accidently cutting down on the international undersea cable network on Wednesday near Alexandria, in Egypt’s north coast.
It is estimated that it could take several days to restore the network and as much as 60% of the Internet users in India could be affected.
Though the extent of impact cannot be determined on the IT industry, Egypt’s telecom ministry said 70% of the country’s Internet network is down.
Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India, informed Reuters that “There has been a 50 to 60% cut in bandwidth.”
Chharia told the Headlines Today news channel that a “degraded” service would be up and running by Wednesday night, but full restoration would take 10 to 15 days.
“There has been a small outage in the evening today. But it has been restored now,” said a spokesman for Satyam Computer, India’s leading outsourcing firm.
Indias leading Internet service provider Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL), said it has restored the internet service by diverting to another cable.
In Bangalore, Indias IT capital, most of the IT companies informed of minimal interuption or no difference in Internet speed.
Gulf Arab countries also informed that Internet has slowed down to a large extent. Bahrain Telecommunications said its services were affected after two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria, on Egypt’s north coast. However, there are no confirmation if this was caused due to shipping or bad weather as Egypt is facing severe storms and has closed the northern mouth of the Suez Canal on Tuesday.
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