Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

[Gert van der Hoek]

Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:01am EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/inte...&rpc=22&sp=true

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday.

credits Texanna

[sharon sanders]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India



Thanks Dutchy for posting.

Very unfortunate and now a part of history.


"When something important is going on, silence is a lie."

A.M. Rosenthal


Thank you all for participating here.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Original link is broken. Here is the story:

UPDATE 1-Internet services in Egypt and India disrupted

Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:08pm EST
(Adds details, quotes, background, previous Mumbai)
By Alaa Shahine
CAIRO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A breakdown in an international undersea cable network disrupted Internet links to Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries on Wednesday, and Egypt said it could take several days for its services to return to normal.
It was not immediately possible to gauge the impact of the disruption on financial institutions. Egypt's telecoms ministry said 70 percent of the country's Internet network was down and India initially said it had lost over half its bandwidth.
"This cut has affected Internet services in Egypt with a partial disruption of 70 percent of the network nationwide," the Egyptian ministry said in a statement.
Residents of Gulf Arab countries also reported a slowdown in Internet connectivity. The Bahrain Telecommunications Co BTEL.BH said its services were affected after two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria, on Egypt's north coast.
The Egyptian telecoms ministry said it did not know how the cables were cut or if weather was a factor. Storms had forced Egypt to close the northern mouth of the Suez canal on Tuesday.
India also reported serious disruptions to its services and Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters: "There has been a 50 to 60 percent 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.
"The big operators have transferred their small broadband connectivity through the Pacific route, and that's the reason there's no hue and cry in the country," he said.
One Indian Internet service provider affected by the cut, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable. Two outsourcing firms in Bangalore reported minimal disruption.
"There has been a small outage in the evening today. But it has been restored now," said a spokesman for Satyam Computer (SATY.BO: Quote, Profile, Research)(SAY.N: Quote, Profile, Research), India's fourth-biggest outsourcing firm.

MIDDLE EAST ROUTES AFFECTED
AT&T Inc. (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said that a cable owned by a consortium of which it is part was affected. "We do know that one cable is disrupted," AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said, adding that the cable in question goes between France and Egypt.
"We are impacted on certain routes to the Middle East. The traffic is being rerouted," Coe said. "Multiple carriers are rerouting so we do expect some congestion."
Egypt said its call centres saw their services cut by more than 30 percent, and two Egyptian stockbrokers said market transactions were considerably slower and some international trading orders could not go through.
"It (the disruption) had a very negative impact on the stock market today," one Cairo-based trader said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "At times, we were trading blind."
Stock market officials were not available for comment.
Egypt's Deputy Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer, asked about the impact of the disruption on the banking system, said: "We are disappointed (with) the service and will consider alternatives for the banking system if this happens again."
In Cairo, much of the capital city was without access to the Internet for the bulk of the day, frustrating businesses and the professions.
"I can't do anything because I manage all my work by e-mail. It is very frustrating," said Egyptian lawyer Rebecca Mikhail. "As soon as I came in (to work) at 10 a.m. I didn't have access to the Internet ... If it goes into the next working week it is going to be a nightmare." (Reporting by Alaa Shahine, Cynthia Johnston and Wael Gamal in Cairo, Devidutta Tripathy in Mumbai, Sumeet Chatterjee in Bangalore, Jonathan Allen in New Delhi and Sinead Carew in New York) (Editing by Tim Pearce)

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL3017857720080130

[sharon sanders]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India




3rd undersea cable cut in Mid-East <!-- show image if available --> <table valign="top" class="padl8" align="right" border="0" width="154"> <tbody><tr><td>

Egypt's telecommunications ministry appealed today for Internet users to stop downloading movies and MP3s so as to give priority to businesses. -- PHOTO: AFP

</td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- story content : start --> MUMBAI


- A THIRD undersea cable was cut on Friday, just two days after two breaks near Egypt disrupted Web access in parts of the Middle East and Asia, Indian-owned cable network operator Flag Telecom said. Egypt lost more than half its Internet capacity because of Wednesday's breaks and intends to seek compensation, its ministry of communications said in a news release.
India's booming outsourcing industry, which provides a range of back-office services, like insurance claims processing and customer support to overseas clients over the Internet, played down Wednesday's disruption, saying they had used back-up plans.
Flag, a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's number two mobile operator Reliance Communications, said on its website on Friday its Falcon cable had been reported cut at 1.59pm Singapore time, 56 kilometres from Dubai, between the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Egyptian telecom authorities said about 55 per cent of the country's Internet capacity had been restored by Friday, thanks to rerouting of traffic.
Egypt is to ask Flag and SEA-ME-WE to compensate its Internet and call centre companies.
<!-- show media links starting at 7th para --> The communications minister, Mr Tarek Kamel, has also decided to make Egypt's Internet Service Providers and Telecom Egypt compensate all their Internet subscribers by providing them with a month's subscription free of charge.
The International Cable Protection Committee, an association of 86 submarine cable operators dedicated to safeguarding undersea cables, has declined to speculate on the cause of the breaches, saying investigations were underway.
It said more than 95 per cent of transoceanic telecoms and data traffic are carried by undersea, the rest by satellite. -- REUTERS

http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Asia/STIStory_202726.html

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Fragile and expendable, finger-thin undersea cables tie the world together

By Peter Svensson
First Published: February 1, 2008

NEW YORK: The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch (1.68 cm) thick where they lie on the ocean floor.

The foundation for a connected world seems quite fragile ? an impression reinforced this week when a break in two cables in the Mediterranean Sea disrupted communications across the Middle East and into India and neighboring countries.


Yet the network itself is fairly resilient. In fact, cables are broken all the time, usually by fishing lines and ship anchors, and few of us notice. It takes a confluence of factors for a cable break to cause an outage.
''Most telecom companies have capacity at multiple systems, so if one goes out, they simply reroute to a different system,'' said Stephan Beckert, analyst at research firm TeleGeography in Washington. ''It's just that in this case, both the main route and the backup route got cut for a lot of companies.''

The two cables ? FLAG Europe Asia and SEA-ME-WE 4 ? were cut on the ocean floor just north of Alexandria, Egypt.

By an accident of geography and global politics, Egypt is a choke point in the global communications network, just as it is with global shipping. The reasons are the same: The country touches both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which flows into the India Ocean.

The slim fiber-optic cables that carry the world's communications are much like ships, in that they're the cheapest way for carrying things over long distances. Pulling cable overland is much more expensive and requires negotiation with landowners and governments.
So fiber-optic cables that go from Europe to India take the sea route via the Suez Canal, just as ships do.

Another Mediterranean cable makes land not far away, in Israel.
But there's no cable overland from Israel into Jordan and to the Persian Gulf, which could have provided a redundant connection for the Gulf States and India. Going overland would have been more expensive and politically difficult ? Israel and Arab countries would have to cooperate.
There is also no route that goes through Russia, Iran and Pakistan to India. The terrain is rugged, Pakistan is politically unstable, and India and Pakistan are not on good terms.

With two of the three cables passing through Suez cut, traffic from the Middle East and India intended for Europe was forced to route eastward, around most of the globe.
The main route goes through Japan and the United States, crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. According to Beckert, this is normally the cheap way to go for Indian traffic, since capacity is high. However, the distance means more time required to reach Europe and get a response.
The other route from India to Europe goes over China into Russia and along the Trans-Siberian railroad.

Egypt is not the only choke point in the global network. The ocean just south of Taiwan proved to be one in December 2006, when an earthquake cut seven of eight cables passing through the area, slowing down communications in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia for months.
Another possible vulnerability is the US island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It is the spider at the center of a web cables from the United States, Japan, Australia, the Philippines and China.

Both cables that connect the United States to Australia and New Zealand run over Hawaii, creating another choke point.
These bottlenecks are likely to go away, however, as telecoms build more and more lines. Another US-Australia line is scheduled to be completed soon, according to Beckert, and a US-China line that bypasses Japan is also in the works.

But it will be years before the network across Asia is as resilient as the trans-Atlantic network, where multiple high-capacity lines over different routes provide a connection that's almost impossible to disrupt. And the factors that make the Suez Canal a vulnerable point now will likely remain.
Mustafa Alani, head of security and terrorism department at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said the outage should be a ''wake-up call'' for governments and professionals to divert more resources to protect vital infrastructure.

''This shows how easy it would be to attack'' communications networks, he said.
Yet the owners of the undersea cables aren't very concerned with terrorism, according to Beckert. They're too busy worrying about fishing boats.

''They want to publish maps of their cables as widely as possible, so fishing crews know where they are,'' Beckert said. ''The risk of accidental cuts is much, much greater than the risk of deliberate cuts.''

http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=11618

[Niko]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Ships did not cut internet cables

Egypt: 3 hours, 32 minutes ago

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says, reported AFP.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

http://www.ameinfo.com/145577.html

[tropical]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Ships did not cut internet cables

Egypt: 3 hours, 32 minutes ago

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says, reported AFP.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

http://www.ameinfo.com/145577.html

Indeed, ships on route did not lift off its anchors.

Fishboat with a drag, can lift or cut a cable.

Those onshore video cameras was enabled to scan for a small siluete wide-range 24 hours?

It will be interesting to know how much deep are the places where the cables was truncated.

If not drags, than what: Jaws6, tectonic movements, "human factor"?

It's good that Internet is enaugh robust to find other ways to propagate (that was the original meaning of the net), and this will be an example for pandemic planning also, because of what rare sort of unaspected things can happened.

Spend more money on redundance.

[JJackson]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Hat tip selil

[tropical]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Thank you selil, and JJackson,
but the picture can't be analysed.

The resolution is so small, and the numeric and other details can't be reached. Also, the sea deepness at the cutting points are not visible,
and the onshore cams range details also.

No matter, those details are probably classified, and the damage will be already resolved (no pandemic for now).

[Niko]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Here is the link for the map posted by JJ (#8) if you'd like to zoom in:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

[tropical]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Here is the link for the map posted by JJ (#8) if you'd like to zoom in:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-imag...SeaCableHi.jpg

From the map it can be seen the epicenter (of the circle) zone.
Seems at C75 (missed from zoning) in:

http://www.1yachtua.com/nauticalcharts/mediterranean_atlas__fugawi.asp

That part of sea bottom seems to have tectonic movements of plates:
Creta_tectonic_movements_of_plates.jpg
Creta_Libya_gravity_fields

If it was an ship indeed, will be interesting to know whose ship lift the anchor down to the bottom.

[tropical]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

CNN:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/02/05/egypt.internet.ap/index.html

Repairs begin on Middle East Web cable

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A repair ship began work Tuesday at the site where an Internet cable was cut last week in the Persian Gulf, and a second vessel was to arrive later that day at the spot north of Egypt where two other cables were cut just two days earlier, FLAG Telecom said.
<!--startclickprintexclude--><!----><!--===========IMAGE============--><!--===========/IMAGE===========--> <!--===========CAPTION==========-->Youths stand outside an Internet cafe during disruption of the Internet service in Cairo, Egypt.<!--===========/CAPTION=========-->

The cuts have disrupted Internet services across a large swath of the Middle East and India, slowing down businesses and hampering personal Internet usage.

There has been wide speculation that the cuts were caused by ships' anchors dragged along the bottom of the sea in stormy weather.

But Egypt's telecommunication ministry said Sunday no ships were registered near the location when the first cut in the cables occurred, north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria.
The Egyptian statement further deepened the enigma of how the damage happened.

U.K.-based FLAG Telecom said its repair ship arrived Tuesday some 35 miles north of Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman, were the company's FALCON cable was damaged Friday.

"The FLAG repair team is operating in extreme weather conditions to ensure timely repairs," the company said on its Web site.
FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, said the second repair ship would reach the cut in its FLAG Europe-Asia cable later Tuesday. That cable was cut last Wednesday some five miles off the Egyptian coast, along a segment between Egypt and Italy.

The Mediterranean cable was cut along with a cable lying next to it, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4, owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.

After the Mediterranean cut, FLAG said repairs would probably take up to a week after its ship arrives. In the meantime, the company said it was able to fully restore circuits to some customers and switch others to alternative routes.

Most governments in the region appeared to have been operating normally following the Internet outage, apparently because they switched to backup satellite systems.

After the Persian Gulf cut, a FLAG official in India, speaking on condition of anonymity because of company policy, said workers were still trying to determine how the cable was cut. He declined to comment on whether the two cuts were somehow linked but said he did not believe FLAG's cables were deliberately targeted.

Large-scale Internet disruptions are rare, but East Asia suffered nearly two months of outages and slow service after an earthquake damaged undersea cables near Taiwan in December 2006.<!--startclickprintexclude-->E-mail to a friend
<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>document.write(cnnRenderTimeStamp(12022 55145210,['February 5, 2008 -- Updated 2345 GMT (0745 HKT)','updated 6:45 p.m. EST, Tue February 5, 2008']));</SCRIPT>

[tropical]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100&#37;" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=30></TD><TD class=sectionheader_news width="40%">At FluWiki:

http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080207153158.v6fgocwq.php

News from the Middle East
</TD><TD class=sectionheader_news align=right width="40%"></TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD></TD><TD vAlign=top align=left colSpan=2></TD><TD vAlign=top align=left></TD></TR><TR><TD>


</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left colSpan=2>
07/02/2008 15:31</CLASS> CAIRO, Feb 7 (AFP)</CLASS>

One Internet cut explained, but four others still a mystery</CLASS>

A ship's anchor severed one undersea Internet cable damaged last week, it was revealed on Thursday amid ongoing outages in the Middle East and South Asia, but mystery shrouds what cut another four.

There has been speculation that five cables being cut in almost as many days was too much of a coincidence and that sabotage must have been involved.

India's Flag telecom said in a statement that the cut to the Falcon cable between the United Arab Emirates and Oman "is due to a ship anchor... an abandoned anchor weighing five to six tonnes was found."

Flag -- part of India's Reliance Communications -- said repair work on the cable which broke on February 1 was continuing despite rough weather, and it was expected to be completed by Sunday.

The company said repairs to its other Flag Europe Asia cable, one of two that were cut off Egypt's Mediterranean coast, were continuing and would also be complete by Sunday.

Technicians aboard the repair ship were using remotely operated submarine vehicles to check the damage, but the company did not say what caused the cut.

There was no immediate word on the state of repairs to the second severed Mediterranean cable, SEA-ME-WE4.

The damage to the first three cables caused widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was then also damaged causing yet more disruption, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Earlier reports said that the damage had been caused by ships that had been diverted from their usual route because of bad weather.

But Egypt has already excluded ships as the cause of damage to the Mediterranean cables thanks to footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables which showed no traffic in the area when the damage occurred.

On Friday yet another undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, causing further disruption to services.

The head of Qatar's telecoms regulator, Hessa al-Jaber, said in press reports that she doubted the damage was deliberate.

The Qatari telecoms firm Qtel told AFP the line was being fixed and that services should return to normal within days.
With a fifth cable cut, speculation has risen as to whether the outages, unprecedented in the region, were coincidence or something more nefarious.

"So many incidents happening in one region, whether it is a coincidence is a moot question," said R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India.

"The coincidence of so many cables snapping does raise doubts about why this is happening. It needs to be answered."

He said that many Internet service providers were still only "getting 30-40 percent bandwidth."

Some blamed companies' failure to provide backup systems for the outages.

"Many companies don't spend on restoration and protection work. They don't build alternative cable networks. That's why these problems happen," said a spokesman for an Indian telecom service provider on condition he not be named.

Bloggers have speculated that the cutting of so many cables in a matter of days is too much of a coincidence and must be down to sabotage.

Theories include a US-backed bid to cut off arch-foe Iran's Internet access, terrorists piloting midget submarines or "vengeful militant dolphins."

An earthquake off the coast of Taiwan in December 2006 snapped several undersea cables and hit Internet access across Asia, but no unusual seismic activity has been reported in the Middle East in recent days.

burs-cjo/srm

</CLASS>
&#169;2008 AFP

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

[sharon sanders]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

machine translation -

65 million pounds loss disrupt Internet in Egypt

2/15/2008 12:06:00 AM

<!-- Image -->

كدت تقرير هام نشرته صحيفة العالم اليوم في عدد الخميس 14/ 2 أن الشركات التي تقدم خدمات الانترنت في مصر خسرت ما يقرب من 65 مليون جنيه بسبب بطء و تعطل خدامات الانترنت في مصر خلال الأسبوعين الماضيين.

Almost important report published by a newspaper in the world today, Thursday 14 / 2 that the companies that provide Internet services in Egypt, lost nearly 65 million pounds because of the slow and disrupted Internet services in Egypt during the last two weeks.

أضاف التقرير أن الشركات التي توفر خدمات الانترنت هي اكثر الشركات المصرية تضررا من العطل الذي أصاب كابل الانترنت الشهير بسبب عدم القدرة علي تقديم الخدمات لعدة أيام.

The report added that the companies that provide Internet services companies are the most affected by the Egyptian holidays that struck Kabul Internet famous because of the inability to provide services for several days.

و صرح وزير الاتصالات و المعلومات المصري،طارق كامل،إن هذه الشركات ستقدم لعملائها شهرا من الخدمة المجانية نظير ما تعرض له العملاء من انقطاع لخدمة الانترنت.

And Minister of Communications and Information of Egypt, Tarek Kamel, these companies will provide their customers months of free service for the attack on customers of Internet service break.

وأكد أن الشركة المصرية للاتصالات لديها 333 ألف مشترك في خدمة الانترنت و يدفع كل منهم 95 جنيه شهريا مقابل الحصول علي خدمة الانترنت مما يعني أن الشركة المصرية للاتصالات ستقدم لمشتركيها خدمة انترنت مجانية تساوي أكثر من 31 مليون جنيه.

He confirmed that Telecom Egypt has 333 thousand subscribers to the Internet service and pay each of them 95 pounds per month in exchange for Internet service, which means that Telecom Egypt will provide Internet service to its subscribers free of charge equal to more than 31 million pounds.

و شركة خدمات الانترنت الاخري لديها 320 ألف مشترك و هذا يعني أنها ستقدم خدمة انترنت مجانية تساوي أكثر من 30 مليون جنيه.

And other Internet services company with 320 thousand subscribers and this means that they will be free Internet service equal to more than 30 million pounds.

ومن المقرر أن تقوم شركتي (فلاج) و (سي مي وي) المالكتين للكابلات التي تعطلت بدفع تعويض مناسب لشركات الانترنت في مصر .

It is scheduled to play two (Vlaj) and (C Mai Wei) holders of cables which disrupted the payment of appropriate compensation for Internet companies in Egypt.

http://www.masrawy.com/news/egypt/default.aspx

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Internet disrupted in Egypt and India

Alarm at cable rift

Dylan Bushell-Embling examines the possibility and impact of a telecommunication blackout in Australia

The Age
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

By Dylan Bushell-Embling

WHEN news broke that four submarine cables -- the giant telecommunications pipelines that connect the world -- had been damaged in the Middle East recently in the space of two weeks, the web was abuzz with conspiracy theories.

Was it a covert operation to prepare for an invasion of Iran? A terrorist attack? To the disappointment of conspiracy theorists everywhere, it seems the answer was "neither of the above".

The cable damage is likely to have been caused by a stray anchor or localised seismic activity.

But the situation did bring Australia's relative isolation into relief. Any significant damage to pipelines into Australia could all-but sever our connection to the outside world.

Analyst Paul Budde says it's natural to be jumpy in a time of heightened international tension. "Everybody in the back of their mind thinks of terrorism or sabotage, especially when it happens in the Middle East," he says. "It's unavoidable."

According to Geoff Huston, chief scientist of the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, the cables are designed to snap if snagged. "You don't want an anchor to drag a cable many kilometres away from its lay position," he says. Locating and repairing it would cost a fortune.

Analysts say it's likely that the Middle East cables were snapped by a rogue anchor, cut off by seismic activity that triggered a landslide or affected by a power failure. No conspiracy, just extremely bad luck.

According to Eric Schoonover, senior analyst at communications specialist Telegeography Research, it's not uncommon for cables to develop faults. "There are very few days in a year when a submarine cable somewhere isn't undergoing repair," he says.

Cable provider Global Marine Systems estimates that more than 50 cables were damaged in the Atlantic alone in 2007.

Communications traffic in South-East Asia was significantly affected by the breakages. "It took two weeks before that was back in order," Mr Budde says.

It generally costs between $2 million and $5 million to repair a single cable, says Bevan Slattery, managing director of PIPE Networks. A fleet of specially rigged maintenance and repair ships roams the high seas ready to fix any damage.

A similar event in Australia could be financially devastating.

"The economic cost of losing, or even just slowing down, international communications is extremely high," Matt Walker, senior analyst at telecom consultants Ovum-RHK, says.

If the two biggest connections into Australia -- the Southern Cross Cable (SXC) and the Australia-Japan Cable (AJC) -- became inoperable at the same time, the cost would be staggering. Mr Slattery estimates that the costs of repairing the cables could easily exceed $10 million, a figure that pales in comparison to the likely costs to the economy.

According to Mr Budde, major repairs to the cables could take up to 2 1/2 weeks. During this time, Australia's economic activity would plummet. "If for 15 days your international traffic was disturbed, you'd start talking about hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars' worth of damage," he says.

Mr Budde says it's vital that governments and businesses have plans in place to cope with such contingencies.

George McLaughlin, vice-chairman of the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network, is less concerned, because all major cables have redundancies built into them, he says.

The figure-eight design of SXC means multiple pipelines can be damaged and a complete path still found.

Mr McLaughlin says that for both pathways into Australia to be down, SXC would have to have been severed in multiple places simultaneously, and AJC in two. "That's six simultaneous breaks, and something other than perhaps a terrorist attack would render that an extremely unlikely case."

Even then, Australia wouldn't be completely cut off from the world. There are two lesser-capacity cables coming out of Western Australia. These cables lack the capacity to support the bandwidth demands of the whole of Australia, however, and it's likely that the terrestrial connections between the west and east of Australia would cause a major bottleneck.

Mr McLaughlin says the Australian Government has systems in place to protect its links to the outside world.

But while the country is unlikely to suffer from accidents of nature, the potential damage from a deliberate attack is another matter.

Date Posted: 2/19/2008

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=87555