If you haven’t been listening or watching or reading the news the past week or so, then we might forgive your ignorance. But the majority of people will know that there have been several internet-cable snaps over in the Middle East. The number keeps growing; first 3, then 4, now it’s 5! Needless to say, the tin-foil-brigade is loving this!
Early Wednesday morning last week, at a point 8 kilometers or 5 miles from the port of Alexandria, a cable that is literally only the width of your finger, snapped. Within two and a half hours another cable, believed to be relatively close by, also snapped. Then at 5:59am local time on Friday, a third cable snapped, 59km off the coast of Dubai, in the Persian Gulf.
Next was the failure of a fourth cable, however there is confusion as to whether this is as a result of a power loss or another breakage. Nevertheless, in a report on the 5th by the Khaleej Times, they reported that a following cable – the fifth in total – has snapped.
“These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.”
The cuts are causing millions of people to suffer from limited or no internet connectivity. Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”
But just why it has happened is unknown, and continues to deepen in drama every time another cable is cut. The original reports that it was due to a ship’s anchor were proved false by the Egypt's Ministry of Communications in a statement released 2 days ago.
"A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time," said the statement.
The ministry added that the location, 5 miles from the port of Alexandria, was in a restricted area so ships would not have been allowed there to begin with.
One blogger from the ILoveBonnie blog provided a list of possible groups or people that could have done this;
* U.S. Government
* Israeli Government
* Aliens
* Underwater Monsters
* The Cloverfield Monster
* Rudy Giuliani
Still another commenter from Slashdot states: Why can I picture George Dubbya Bush in a scuba suit, holding a giant pair of sheers and screaming "I'll cut off the terrorist's interweb tubes!"
OK, the funny aside, this really has raised some serious questions. Stepping away from the tin-foil crazies for a moment, whatever or whoever has done this has highlighted a crucial problem in the internet network across the planet. Back in 2006, Taiwan suffered total internet loss for weeks as 7 of the 8 cables connecting that country to the internet were damaged by an earthquake. And in fact an earthquake is the only logical explanation for multiple cables in an area snapping, but there has been no evidence of an earthquake in the region.
These breakages have only highlighted what could turn out to be a serious flaw in the global internet network. Whether or not terrorists, America or George W. are at work behind this, no one is sure. But you can be certain that in the future there are going to be threats on internet lines worldwide, considering how seemingly easy it must be for them to break.
A Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm
