Banks enjoying internet priority

Dubai: Some businesses and their customers are struggling with slow internet speeds since three telecom cables were cut on Friday, but banks and financial services companies were enjoying priority on the information highway.

Since the telecommunications cables were cut, many readers of Gulf News wrote in to the newspaper's website complaining about the impact of the slow speed of the internet in the UAE.

"The internet has been very slow since Friday morning. Traffic over http is fine in almost all the websites.

"However, https ssl (secure port) traffic is impossible to access. This is affecting our online business and staff access to the https website," Munir, a reader in Dubai wrote in to the website.

etisalat on Monday said that capacity has dropped to 85 per cent, causing the internet speed to be sluggish.

While repairs to the cables began on Monday morning, the situation is not expected to be resolved until December 27, in the case of etisalat and until December 31 for all operators.

Aside from the slow speed across the board, some websites were also badly affected.

High traffic websites that also require more bandwidth than usual sites are facing the most difficulty.

Rishikesh Trivedi, marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Epicor Software Corporation, provider of integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other business solutions, spoke to Gulf News about the impact of the current disruption in telecom services in the UAE.

"The cable cuts are like Shaikh Zayed Road with three lanes blocked. The traffic will still flow, but very slowly," he said.

Trevedi added that the situation in the UAE was not as bad as in India, Saudi Arabia or Egypt.

"People are not even receiving emails in Saudi Arabia," he said.

Business can still carry on as the phones are working, if and when emails are late, he added.