Internet woes in Egypt and India

Any internet junkie can sympathize with this blogger who told the BBC how the cable cut affected his life. He said the situation is like a healthy man suddenly finding he’s in intensive care on life support. Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Technology told the media today that systems have been affected by 70-80%. Users in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan to name just three more have also been affected. The damage occurred when two undersea cables north of Egypt were somehow cut. This Director of Research at a Washington based consulting firm says usually the cable cuts only affect the cable companies, but two of the three systems carrying traffic from Europe to Asia and the Middle East were cut, accounting for 75% of the capacity. This has spelled economic trouble for a place like India. This man works for a New Delhi company and says his office feels completely cut off. These days India’s communication problems are felt in the West due to outsourcing. So companies and cable operators are struggling to reroute telecommunications traffic. Egyptian officials say it may take a week to restore service completely.