Today it was announced that another undersea cable has been cut, making it the fifth undersea to be damaged since January 23.
90% of Internet traffic is routed through undersea cables, with the remaining 10% coming from satellites.
The damage is estimated to have impacted 1.7 million users in the UAE, 60 million in India, 6 million in Egypt, and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.
While Internet data took the biggest hit with the cable damage, voice and video traffic was also affected.
What’s causing the damage? No one seems to know at this point. When undersea cables are damaged it is usually the result of a ships anchor being dragged through it or inclement weather, but it seems odd to have five cables sustain damage in just a 2-week period.
Traffic is be re-routed and things are more or less back to normal.
UPDATE: Okay, not so odd after all. Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time. It’s just not usually jumped on by the media so much.
Stephen Beckert of TeleGeography Research says that “cable cuts happen on average once every three days…there are 25 large ships that do nothing but fix cable cuts and bends.”
So much for that conspiracy.
[Via Engadget]
