(Bloomberg) -- Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted after three submarine cables between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea were damaged.
The failures cut the flow of ``data of various kinds'' between Europe and the Middle East, and there's no timeframe for when communications will be restored, said Sanjeev Gaur, director of assurance at Reliance Globalcom Ltd. in India.
Three cable systems carrying more than 75 percent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America have been damaged, according to the U.K.'s Interoute Plc, which operates a fiber- optic data network connecting 92 cities. The cables run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to Sicily in southern Italy. In January, an anchor severed the cables outside Alexandria after bad weather conditions forced ships to moor off the coast.
``The information we have is a bit sketchy, but chances are that it will have been an anchor again,'' Jonathan Wright, Interoute's director of wholesale products, said in a telephone interview. ``Close to 90 percent of all the data traffic between Europe and the Middle East is carried on these three cable systems.''
Interoute said the January incident brought down 70 percent of the Internet network in India and the Middle East.
Egyptian Outage
``Customer services and some mobile-phone customers'' at Vodafone Group Plc's Egyptian unit are affected by the cable failure, said Simon Gordon, a spokesman for the U.K. company. Egypt is the only country where the company is aware of any problems linked to the failure, he said. Most mobile-phone calls are routed through fixed-line cables at some point.
Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, Portugal's biggest phone company, has redirected traffic through other cables in the region and therefore the ``impact is very small,'' said a company official.
``You can reroute the data through other cables, but that increases traffic and can potentially create bottlenecks,'' Interoute's Wright said. ``So Internet connections may slow down and some phone calls could get disrupted.''
Some of Interoute's clients in the U.K. and Southern France are probably ``affected'' by the failure, Wright said.
Fixing Problem
``It's difficult to forecast how long it will take to fix the problem as it depends on the weather and sea conditions in the Mediterranean,'' Wright said.
A fault is affecting the SMW4 cable near the Alexandria cable station, the FLAG FEA cable is down and the SMW3 cable system is also affected, according to information received from Telstra. Flag Telecom Group Ltd., a Reliance Globalcom unit, operates FLAG FEA and the other cables are owned by groups of phone companies across the regions.
Reliance Globalcom doesn't know exactly what happened and engineers are working on the problem, said Anurag Joshi, head of the company's global network operations center.
The SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4 or South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable network, connects 12 countries: Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.
The failures cut the flow of ``data of various kinds'' between Europe and the Middle East, and there's no timeframe for when communications will be restored, said Sanjeev Gaur, director of assurance at Reliance Globalcom Ltd. in India.
Three cable systems carrying more than 75 percent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America have been damaged, according to the U.K.'s Interoute Plc, which operates a fiber- optic data network connecting 92 cities. The cables run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to Sicily in southern Italy. In January, an anchor severed the cables outside Alexandria after bad weather conditions forced ships to moor off the coast.
``The information we have is a bit sketchy, but chances are that it will have been an anchor again,'' Jonathan Wright, Interoute's director of wholesale products, said in a telephone interview. ``Close to 90 percent of all the data traffic between Europe and the Middle East is carried on these three cable systems.''
Interoute said the January incident brought down 70 percent of the Internet network in India and the Middle East.
Egyptian Outage
``Customer services and some mobile-phone customers'' at Vodafone Group Plc's Egyptian unit are affected by the cable failure, said Simon Gordon, a spokesman for the U.K. company. Egypt is the only country where the company is aware of any problems linked to the failure, he said. Most mobile-phone calls are routed through fixed-line cables at some point.
Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, Portugal's biggest phone company, has redirected traffic through other cables in the region and therefore the ``impact is very small,'' said a company official.
``You can reroute the data through other cables, but that increases traffic and can potentially create bottlenecks,'' Interoute's Wright said. ``So Internet connections may slow down and some phone calls could get disrupted.''
Some of Interoute's clients in the U.K. and Southern France are probably ``affected'' by the failure, Wright said.
Fixing Problem
``It's difficult to forecast how long it will take to fix the problem as it depends on the weather and sea conditions in the Mediterranean,'' Wright said.
A fault is affecting the SMW4 cable near the Alexandria cable station, the FLAG FEA cable is down and the SMW3 cable system is also affected, according to information received from Telstra. Flag Telecom Group Ltd., a Reliance Globalcom unit, operates FLAG FEA and the other cables are owned by groups of phone companies across the regions.
Reliance Globalcom doesn't know exactly what happened and engineers are working on the problem, said Anurag Joshi, head of the company's global network operations center.
The SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4 or South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable network, connects 12 countries: Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.
