Two significant undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean Sea yesterday, causing widespread Internet outage and service delays in Egypt, India and elsewhere, though much of the traffic on the cables was able to be rerouted. Though undersea cable damage hardly ever happens, the cause in both cases may have been force of nature or an accident involving a ship's anchor. The Sea Me We 4 cable and FLAG cable that were affected are run by different operators. Both cables support a large amount of traffic to and from the back office and customer service operations run out of India for many US. companies.
TeleGeography, which closely follows the global undersea cable market, said traffic has been booming along these routes in recent year. TeleGeography research director Alan Mauldin said there are many new cable projects planned for Europe-to-Middle East routes in the near future, and that they should help provide some service diversity in the future.
For more:
- read this story at The New York Times
- see this analysis from TeleGeography
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