Slow Internet Connection? You Are Not Alone & Fix Will Take ~25 Days
Are you experiencing slow Internet connection since last few days? Have you been cursing your Internet service provider for pathetic quality of service? Well, this time, it's not their fault and you are not alone who's getting 1/10th of your regular connection speeds. In fact, the Internet connectivity in entire South East Asia, Middle East and Africa has been affected and the reason is the broken SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia–Middle East–West Europe 4) along with damage to IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) and EIG (Europe India Gateway) undersea cables that connect most of the region to the Internet servers located in the US & UK. It's being reported that the major cause of disruption of the service is the damage to these cables off the coast of Alexandria, that run from Singapore to France. The maintenance work has already began but is likely to take about 25 days to complete.
On 27 March, BBC reported that three divers were arrested from the coast of Alexandria who were trying to cut the undersea Internet cable. Further information is not yet available and it's unclear whether the incident is linked to the cables that got damaged. SEACOM, the African telecom company says that the cause of damage is likely to be something else and they're continuing to investigate the issue.
Most of the data and voice communication (~90%) is done through the undersea cables that span several thousand kilometers. The SMW4 cable, for example is 18,800 kilometres in length. The rest of the communication is routed through satellites. India has connected to these undersea cables through a number of ports including Mumbai and Chennai and also has an array of satellites (six apart from INSAT series). This allows the Internet traffic to be routed through other channels and minimise the impact.
Indian telecom companies viz. Airtel, Tata Communications, Reliance and BSNL are involved in the maintenance and operations of these undersea cables. Airtel said in a statement that the voice traffic has been normalised and data services are being worked on by routing the data-traffic through alternate routes. Tata Communications, which is the network administrator of the SMW4 and IMEWE cables has confirmed that the SMW4 cable has been cut.
The maintenance work is in progress, but likely to take few more days. We hope the issue gets fixed and we get back to our regular Internet connection speeds.
Update (2 April 2013) : SECOM has restored the connection. Check the official note from the company below -
On 27 March, BBC reported that three divers were arrested from the coast of Alexandria who were trying to cut the undersea Internet cable. Further information is not yet available and it's unclear whether the incident is linked to the cables that got damaged. SEACOM, the African telecom company says that the cause of damage is likely to be something else and they're continuing to investigate the issue.
Most of the data and voice communication (~90%) is done through the undersea cables that span several thousand kilometers. The SMW4 cable, for example is 18,800 kilometres in length. The rest of the communication is routed through satellites. India has connected to these undersea cables through a number of ports including Mumbai and Chennai and also has an array of satellites (six apart from INSAT series). This allows the Internet traffic to be routed through other channels and minimise the impact.
Indian telecom companies viz. Airtel, Tata Communications, Reliance and BSNL are involved in the maintenance and operations of these undersea cables. Airtel said in a statement that the voice traffic has been normalised and data services are being worked on by routing the data-traffic through alternate routes. Tata Communications, which is the network administrator of the SMW4 and IMEWE cables has confirmed that the SMW4 cable has been cut.
The maintenance work is in progress, but likely to take few more days. We hope the issue gets fixed and we get back to our regular Internet connection speeds.
Update (2 April 2013) : SECOM has restored the connection. Check the official note from the company below -
SEACOM has completed the process of connecting all customers requiring restoration back into service on the SEACOMcable system link that was cut between Egypt and Europe. All of these services have returned to normal as of 11:47 GMT.
In addition to restoring its own customers, SEACOM has also been able to provide restoration for customers on other East Africa cable systems impacted by the recent cuts.
"SEACOM is pleased to have been able to restore all services for our customers.
We apologise again for the impact these multiple cable cuts have caused over the past 8 days. The work done by the SEACOM team has been outstanding. They have worked around the clock with our global partners to achieve a massive manual restoration task at a time of much disruption in regional cable systems" said Mark Simpson, SEACOM CEO.
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