Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)

Mon Feb 4 18:53:09 UTC 2008

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 22:56:39 -0500 (EST)
Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> Caution: upon further research it appears there may be some language
> misscommunication in some of the reports; and some of the outages may
> be multiple reports of the same incidents.
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February115.xml&section=theuae
>    Confirming international media reports, an Etisalat official
> yesterday told Khaleej Times that the cable network was not
> completely severed, though the damage slowed down the already
> affected system. He did not give any further details regarding the
> cause of damage. [...]
>    This is the third incident of its kind in the area since January 30
>    since the cables were first damaged in the Mediterranean and then
> off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and
>    international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and
> south Asia.
> 
> FLAG restoration update information:
> http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%20Bulletin%20Release%20030208.pdf
> 

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21567&email=html
is probably as authoritative a source as one can find for what
happened.  It says there were two cuts in the Mediterranean (SEA-ME-WE 4
near Marseille) and Flag Telecom's Europe-Asia cable near Alexandria.
The Flag Telecom Falcon cable was cut between UAE and Oman, and the
Qatar-UAE cable failed due to a power issue.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb