Thread: Internet services badly affected in India

[my comment - this is what can happen sending work offshore]

Internet services badly affected in India

A Correspondent | January 31, 2008 12:17 IST
Last Updated: January 31, 2008 13:13 IST


Extensive damage to two undersea cables has thrown Internet activity across large parts of India, Asia and the Middle East, out of gear.

According to reports, a ship anchoring off Egypt's Alexandria coast cut through the Indian-owned FLAG and also the SEA-ME-WE cable on Wednesday, leading to an unprecedented disruption in international connectivity.

"The repair will take another 15-20 days," Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said. Although repair teams have rushed to the Egyptian coast to fix the problem and a 'low grade' service is likely to be activated soon.

Some service providers affected by the breakdown include FLAGTEL of ADAG Reliance [Get Quote] and Delhi's Internet ISP Spectranet and Bangalore's ISP Karturi Network, he said.

"Majority of the firms are trying to restore their connections through the Pacific Region, which is increasing the latency period (time taken to connect two servers)," he added. Chharia said the Bombay Stock Exchange was unlikely to be impacted as it is connected through the VPN.

Indian Internet services were badly hit because the damaged cables are a channel for traffic to the United States and Europe.

Many critical operations have already been badly affected by the disruption to the Internet service, although business process outsourcing units in India say that they have not been badly affected.

However, quick move by repair teams to find alternative routes have saved the services from totally collapsing and operations at major stock exchanges in the region were not affected, although they remained painfully slow.

Meanwhile, reports said that almost 60 per cent of India's Internet users were affected, including corporations and individuals.

No estimate of the magnitude of losses have been incurred due to the breakdown in Internet links has yet been made.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/31net.htm

Damnit! No wonder I couldn't get my third world tech support!!!!

Outsourcing will not be a problem in another 2 years. Dollar's bottom is about to give away. There will be no respect for dollar in the world. Dollar store will be like a 4 dollar store.

However the outcome will be good.

Mexicans will not come running into America. Illegal Immigration will not be a problem AND WE WILL HAVE OUR MANUFACTURING JOBS BACK.

Originally Posted by bluecollar

Outsourcing will not be a problem in another 2 years. Dollar's bottom is about to give away. There will be no respect for dollar in the world. Dollar store will be like a 4 dollar store.

However the outcome will be good.

Mexicans will not come running into America. Illegal Immigration will not be a problem AND WE WILL HAVE OUR MANUFACTURING JOBS BACK.

This might be the best thing for us. If we are smart enough to vote out those who caused this debacle without regard to party, we might get our country back.

No wonder my spam filter went on vacation.

Dixie

More cables cut!

Third Internet Cable Cut in Middle East
Friday , February 01, 2008

A leading Internet provider in the Emirates said an undersea cable had been cut early Friday in the Persian Gulf, causing severe phone line disruptions here and compounding an already existing Internet outage across large parts of the Middle East and Asia after two other undersea cables were damaged earlier this week north of Egypt.

Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's IPS DU, said the incident was "very unusual." He said it wasn't known how the underwater FLAG FALCON cable, stretching between the United Arab Emirates and Oman, had been damaged.

"The situation is critical for us in terms of congestion" on international lines, Sultan told The Associated Press, but refused to speculate on the extent of the damage.

DU said in a press release that the cause of the incident "had not yet been identified."

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The owner of the FALCON cable, U.K. FLAG Telecom said the cable was cut at 05:59 GMT Friday, 56 kilometers (34.8 miles) off the coast of Dubai and that a "repair ship has been notified and expected to arrive at the site in the next few days."

The U.K. company is also the owner of one of the undersea cables that were sliced Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea. That damage triggered wide Internet outages, hampering businesses and private usage across the Mideast and Asia.

A FLAG official in India, speaking on condition of anonymity because of company policy, said workers were still trying to determine how the Persian Gulf cable was cut.

He declined to comment on whether the cut was somehow linked to Wednesday's cut in Egypt, but said he did not believe FLAG's cables were deliberately targeted.

As in the case of the Mediterranean damage, which Egyptian officials said was caused by a ship's anchor when a vessel couldn't dock in the port of Alexandria, there was also speculation that an anchor had sliced the Persian Gulf cable.

DU said the incident "added further complications to the existing cuts on the FLAG Europe-Asia and SEA-ME-WE4 cables" off the coast of Egypt and that the Persian Gulf cut "impacted all international voice calls through the DU network," leading to "severe congestion and degradation of international voice calls."

It said national calls in the Emirates and Internet access were not affected.

DU serves large residential communities of expatriates in the Emirates, including residents on the man-made luxury islands off the coast of Dubai. The Internet provider also serves Dubai International Financial Center.

The full impact of the latest incident on trade in the Mideast's business hub will not be gauged until Sunday, the first working day after the Friday-Saturday Muslim weekend.

Earlier Friday, FLAG said that a repair ship was expected to arrive Tuesday at the site of the damaged cables off the coast of Alexandria, and that repair work would likely take a week.

The Mediterranean cut took place 8.3 kilometers (5 miles) from Alexandria, on a stretch linking Egypt to Italy, the company said but gave no explanation why repairs would take so long. Alexandria harbor has been closed for most of this week because of bad weather.

Egypt's Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said Friday that the Internet service in the country would be up and running to about 80 percent of its usual capacity within 48 hours, revising an earlier statement that this level would be restored by late Friday.

"However, it's not before ten days until the Internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil told the Friday edition of the state Al-Ahram newspaper. There are eight million Internet users in Egypt, according to a ministry count.

Kamil described Wednesday's damage as an "earthquake" and said the reason behind the cut would only be determined once repair teams with their robot equipment reach the damaged cables.

The official MENA new agency quoted Kamil as saying technicians managed to raise the level of the Internet service Thursday to about 45 percent and that Telecom Egypt would get soon a bandwidth of 10 gigabyte to be increased to 13 gigabyte — close to the country's total capacity of 16 gigabytes.

But Internet access remained sporadic Friday.

The paper also said that state Telecom Egypt on Thursday "sealed a deal" for a new 3,100 kilometer (1,900 miles) -long undersea cable between Egypt and France, also through the Mediterranean that would take over 18 months to complete. It did not say who Telecom's partners in the deal were.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327588,00.html