Ship arrives to fix severed Internet cable in Persian Gulf

CAIRO, Egypt -- A repair ship began work Tuesday at the site where an Internet cable was cut last week in the Persian Gulf, and a second vessel was to arrive later that day at the spot north of Egypt where two other cables were cut just two days earlier, FLAG Telecom said.

The cuts have disrupted Internet services across a large swath of the Middle East and India, slowing down businesses and hampering personal Internet usage.

There has been wide speculation that the cuts were caused by ships' anchors dragged along the bottom of the sea in stormy weather. But Egypt's telecommunication ministry said Sunday no ships were registered near the location when the first cut in the cables occurred, north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria.

The Egyptian statement further deepened the enigma of how the damage happened.

U.K.-based FLAG Telecom said its repair ship arrived Tuesday some 35 miles north of Dubai, between the United Arab Emirates and Oman, were the company's FALCON cable was damaged Friday.

"The FLAG repair team is operating in extreme weather conditions to ensure timely repairs," the company said on its Web site.

FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, said the second repair ship would reach the cut in its FLAG Europe-Asia cable later Tuesday. That cable was cut last Wednesday some five miles off the Egyptian coast, along a segment between Egypt and Italy.

The Mediterranean cable was cut along with a cable lying next to it, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4, owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.

After the Mediterranean cut, FLAG said repairs would probably take up to a week after its ship arrives. In the meantime, the company said it was able to fully restore circuits to some customers and switch others to alternative routes.

Most governments in the region appeared to have been operating normally following the Internet outage, apparently because they switched to backup satellite systems.

After the Persian Gulf cut, a FLAG official in India, speaking on condition of anonymity because of company policy, said workers were still trying to determine how the cable was cut. He declined to comment on whether the two cuts were somehow linked but said he did not believe FLAG's cables were deliberately targeted.

Large-scale Internet disruptions are rare, but East Asia suffered nearly two months of outages and slow service after an earthquake damaged undersea cables near Taiwan in December 2006.