Internet Mayhem

Well, as of yesterday the Internet pretty much died. I initially thought that it had something to do with Vodafone and the fact that I am yet to pay my bill, but, having managed to get onto BBC’s news website today, I now know that my connection troubles are due to the fact that three out of four Internet and Phone cables connecting Alexandria (and by extension the rest of Egypt, Middle East, India and Pakistan) have been cut. These cables carry 90% of all Internet and phone traffic between the Middle East, India, Pakistan and Europe and US. Now, given that this is a second outage in the last 12 months you got to suspect foul play. I have done some research on the last outage – two out of the four Alexandria's cables was cut then. Despite various unsubstantiated rumours, speculating that the last outage has been caused by a ship’s anchor and/or seismic event, the actual cause of the last outage remains unknown to the general public – cameras monitoring the sea over the cable have not recorded any ships and apparently there is no record of any seismic event taking place at that time. This time around the outage is far more serious. There are once again unsubstantiated rumours of an anchor or seismic event, but one has to wonder...