Flag Telecom confirms ship anchor blamed for Internet cuts

By: John Lester
Staff Writer
Published: Feb 9, 2008

Repairs on two undersea Internet cables should be completed by Sunday.

FLAG Telecom has confirmed that a ship anchor was to blame for at least one of the three undersea fiber optic cables which were cut last week. The anchor had snapped from an abandoned six-ton ship.

The communications company maintained that its severed Europe-Asia Internet cable in the Mediterranean Sea that links Egypt and Italy also would be repaired by Sunday as well as the links spanning Dubai and Oman.

Flag Telecom operates the fiber-optic cable which runs from the eastern coast of North America to Japan. The international company announced it will lay a new, much stronger cable between Egypt and France. The new data link will be also laid on a different route.

The two international submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea were damaged on the morning of Jan. 30, causing significant disruptions to Internet and phone traffic in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and all of the Gulf states. The breaches reportedly affected an estimated 1.7 million Internet users.

Until service is restored, many carriers in Egypt and the Middle East are routing their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.