According to this Arab News article, Saudi access to the Internet won’t be back to normal for another 10 days, or maybe more. Not only is about 50% of the Kingdom’s on-line population affected, but users from India through Egypt are without access. These days, that’s a hard burden to bear, even for individuals. Companies that rely on the interconnectivity of the World Wide Web must be frantic. I wonder if there’s some sort of insurance one can purchase to protect against business losses?

The piece also points out that home users of broadband will see their access diminished as ISPs will be shifting the load to permit businesses to continue.

Internet Disruption May Last 10 Days
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News

ALKHOBAR, 1 February 2008 — Disruption to communications in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East and South Asia continues due to a cut in two submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea.

Both the FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 4 undersea cables have been cut, off the coast of Egypt near Alexandria. Some reports claim that the cut was caused by a ship’s anchor, but neither cable operator has confirmed the reason for the outage.

Regarding the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, a spokesperson for Alcatel-Lucent said: “Cable damages of this kind normally happen because of seismic activity, earthquakes or anchoring issues. Until the cable is brought back to the surface, the exact cause cannot be determined. The maintenance consortium responsible for repair is taking the needed steps.”

There is no definite time specified for the repair but early indications are that at least 10 days and perhaps two weeks will be needed to bring both cables back to full service. The Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG), is a 28,000 km long submarine communications cable owned by India’s Reliance Communications Ltd.
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