Undersea cable cut again

Slashdot It! A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official. Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia. "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones. The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added. "It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said. There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while du the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors. "It's ship anchoring," said the Flag official. Via Dow Jones Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post