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Internet services have been largely affected since Wednesday evening in large parts of South Asia, Saudi Arabia, Middle East countries and India due to the damage caused to the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG underwater cables. These cables have been cut off near the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Although the original cause of this damage has not been determined yet, but some sources claim that the cables probably have been cut by some ship’s anchor or seismic shift of the earth.
The FLAG or Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe is a submarine tele-communications cable which spans over 28,000kms and is owned by the renowned Indian company, Reliance Communications Ltd. The SEA-ME-WE 4 or the Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable is also an underwater cable spanning over 20,000kms. The SEA-ME-WE 4 is responsible for establishing the telecommunications link between Southeast Asia to Europe via India and the Middle East countries. The disruption of both these cables has caused a severe damage to the Internet and web services in all these countries.
According to the reports, the Internet connectivity of Egypt has been affected by 70%, while that of India has been affected by about 60%. The Saudi Arabian countries have been the worst hit; although the exact percentage has not yet been calculated. The Indian call-centre industry has received a severe jolt since all telephone links with the European and American countries have been badly disrupted.
In order to solve this Internet crisis, the ISPs in these countries are forced to shift the available bandwidth for the corporate clients and as a result, the home users will have an extremely slow Internet speed. In fact, it will be difficult for the home users to access web services like Yahoo!, Hotmail, MSN, etc. during the peak business hours.
This Internet crisis is likely to last for some days since it would take about 10-14 days to repair the underwater cables.
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