Middle East and Asia lose internet access after cable fails

Source: The Guardian

Middle East and Asia lose internet access after cable fails

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday January 30 2008

Huge swathes of the Middle East and Asia have been left
without internet access after a vital undersea cable was
damaged.

A fault in the pipeline, which runs between Sicily and
Egypt, has dramatically reduced access in countries
including Saudi Arabia, Dubai and India, leaving millions
of workers struggling to get online.

It is not yet clear what is wrong with the undersea cable,
but the effects are already being felt across the region.
Reports from the Middle East suggest that most countries
are almost completely without access to the internet,
while authorities in Mumbai have said that more than half
of India's bandwidth has been lost.

-snip-

The outage could have drastic impacts around the globe.
Not only will the lack of connectivity strike the technology
industry, including India's so-called Silicon City of
Bangalore, but the banking industry is also likely to suffer
as stock markets struggle to complete international trades.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/30/asia.internet.outage

You know, trying to put a damper on all those "extremist Islamofascist" websites like Al-Jazeera. We can't have these uppity Muslims communicating with each other via the internets.

Who will be available to man the customer service centers???

It's not America's problem!

I've got Asian customers screaming, but even worse are my domestic customers trying to access Asian networks.

Yes, it's slow. We know. We can't do a thing about it. It may be weeks.

...just like my cable modem- all it takes is one hungry squirrel* or a forest fire and -"blip"- no access to outside world.

*Apparently, the local rodent-types have developed a taste for optical cable housing. I dunno.:shrug:

nothing like a little access break to let tech companies know just how far away India really is.

Oh how sad.

America won't know what to do without support.