Internet slowdown exasperates residents

Dubai/ Abu Dhabi/ Fujairah: Patience is a virtue - one which may have been strenuously overused last week by internet users.

Residents were in for a surprise as three undersea cables connecting the region to Europe and America were damaged over a week ago that reduced internet capacity to 85 per cent, according to Etisalat. du said in a statement that they were using cables in the Far East and the Western United States to continue their linkage to severed areas.

Web pages could not be opened, e-mails at work were delayed and some residents had a difficult time merely connecting to the internet.

In a recent Gulf News poll, 30 per cent of respondents said that the internet slowdown did not bother them, 20 per cent had their work affected, and 15 per cent had their social life affected by it. The majority of respondents - 36 per cent, said their work and social life were both affected by last week's internet slowdown.

City Talk took to the streets and asked residents how many hours a day they used the internet and whether the internet slowdown last week had any impact on their work or their social life.

Disappointed

Mohsen Ali, an 18-year-old typist from Pakistan, said: "I use the internet mostly at work, and it affected me a lot and in half an hour I only managed to do five minutes' worth of work. I hardly use it for social reasons except to check my e-mails, I do not even do that often."

Maribeth Bulacaso, a Filipina sales representative, 39, said: "I could not even get connected to the internet, which was terrible for me because I use it around four times a day to chat online with my family in the Philippines. Instead, I had to talk to my family quickly over the telephone and explain that we would chat once the internet was fixed in the country. I was very disappointed by that."

Aida Morcos, a personal assistant, from Egypt, 54, said: "I spend between four to five hours on the internet and mostly use it at work. I mainly use the internet for browsing purposes and to access my outlook. During that week, my Outlook was slow and that somewhat affected me since 90 per cent of my work is done through e-mails."

Clinical psychologist Dr Isis Badawi, from America, 56, said: "I do not spend a lot of time on the internet since my job mostly involves meeting patients and doing administrative jobs. But my Outlook was slow and I received an e-mail a day late, which made me miss out on an important appointment. I did not know about the cancellation and ended up showing up to the meeting room and missed out on a lot of other important appointments."

Haider Saleh Mahdi, a 29-year-old office assistant from Iraq, said: "I use the internet almost all the time so I cannot estimate how many hours I am on it. I use it to stay in touch with family and friends, to check out the news and for general entertainment. When the interruption happened I felt like had I lost something very important in my lifestyle and it affected me a lot. I felt my daily routine was ruined and felt very frustrated. As I work at a car rental office, we are also very dependent on the internet to check on road fines and so, the internet slowdown affected our business, to an extent."

Ellen De Nicola, a Canadian interior designer, 27, said: "I use the internet five to six hours a day, and mostly at work. I was not really affected by the internet shutdown this past week anyway since I am currently on vacation and hardly use the computer when I take time off."

Jamil Akhtar, a Bangladeshi sales officer, 56, said: "As a travel officer we use the internet for ticketing and flight enquiries and such, so yes, we are very dependent on it. I did not notice any interruption last week as everything appeared to be normal and our work was not affected. My use of the internet is limited to work hours and is purely for work purposes, except on the odd occasion for checking the news or general reading."