Internet access across large parts of the Middle East and India has been severely disrupted after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean were damaged. Up to 70% of the network in Egypt and 60% in India have been hit by the disruption.
Industry experts believe it could take a week to repair the cables and bring a full service back online. International phone calls to the regions, which have also hit by the disruption, have been re-routed. An official at United Arab Emirates ISP Du claimed that a fault in the network between Alexandria in Egypt and Palermo in Italy was responsible for the outage.
In a statement issued to customers Du referred to a “degradation in internet services and international voice calls for some customers during peak times”. “We are working actively with submarine cable system operators Flag Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4 to ascertain the reasons for the cables being cut,” the ISP said.
Analyst firm Gartner has suggested that the companies are being affected because of poor disaster planning. Most plans allow only for a week’s shutdown, but if repairs take longer serious losses will be incurred.
“The impact of a disaster that lasts more than a week can have an enormous negative impact on revenue, reputation and brand,” said Roberta Witty, research vice president at Gartner. “Regional incidents, service provider outages, terrorism and pandemics can easily last longer than seven days.
“Organisations must be prepared. More mature business continuity management and disaster recovery programmes plan for outages of at least 30 days.”
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