India and countries across the Middle East experienced slow Internet connections and problems making international calls to the U.S. and Europe after two submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea were cut.
The break, which may have been caused by a ship's anchor near Alexandria, northern Egypt, will take 12 to 15 days to fix, a spokesman for Flag Telecom Group Ltd., which operates one of the cables, said by telephone from Mumbai yesterday.
``The majority of our IT companies, BPOs and call centers which are using the Atlantic route for dialing to the U.S. East Coast have been badly affected,'' Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Provider Association of India, said by telephone from New Delhi today. Flag Telecom's cable ``has lost 50 to 60 percent capacity,'' he added.
Countries such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were affected and 70 percent of the network in Egypt was down, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
``Only 10 to 15 percent of our connectivity with the international gateway faced problems,'' Anil Kumar Jain, deputy director general of state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., India's largest telecommunications carrier, said by telephone from New Delhi today.
Cable Operators
Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., the United Arab Emirates' second-biggest mobile-phone company, is working with the cable operators, Flag Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4, to determine when services can be restored, the company, known as du, said in an e-mailed release.
``In the meantime, du has already started transferring Internet and international voice traffic through other cable systems that have not been affected, although some congestion may be expected at peak times until this issue is resolved,'' the company said in the statement yesterday.
Flag is owned by Reliance Communications Ltd., India's second-largest wireless carrier, whose chairman is billionaire Anil Ambani.
``It's a national disaster,'' said Joseph Metry, network supervisor at Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the biggest mobile- phone company in the Middle East and North Africa. The problem is affecting all Egyptian Internet users, Metry said in a phone interview from Cairo yesterday. The cables are not easily broken so there must have been a ``huge hit.''
Phone Company
Customers of AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. phone company, have been affected, spokesman Michael Coe said. While the company is rerouting its clients' traffic, it anticipates congestion since other carriers are doing the same thing, he said. He didn't know how many customers were affected.
San Antonio-based AT&T is part of the group that owns one of the cables, Coe said. AT&T had $4.7 billion in corporate sales last quarter, or 27 percent of total revenue.
Verizon Communications Inc., the second-biggest U.S. phone company, said some customers have been affected by the cable break. The New York-based company is switching those clients to other network routes, said Verizon spokeswoman Linda Laughlin.
Verizon also co-owns one of the cables as part of a group with several other carriers, and the companies pay regular maintenance fees that will cover the cost to repair the cable, Laughlin said. She said she didn't know how many clients were affected.
Bahrain Telecommunications Co., which holds the franchise to provide all of Bahrain's public telecommunications, said in an e-mailed statement that ``Internet services will still be available but at a degraded speed during peak hours.''
Egypt's Ministry of Telecommunications ``has formed an emergency team to bring back the service quickly through several alternative paths such as the Suez Canal and satellite links,'' according to a statement broadcast on Egyptian television.