Abu Dhabi: Etisalat said all efforts are being made to fix a break in SMW4, a subsea fibre optic system, close to Alexandria in the Mediterranean sea.
“We have quickly initiated a contingency plan to reroute traffic to minimise the customer impact and are working closely with the parties concerned to ensure the earliest possible restoration of the cables,” etisalat said in a statement.
The company added that it will be monitoring traffic to minimise overall customer impact as the network is being regularised.
Etisalat’s diverse international network is designed to minimise the impact of these types of events.
A telecommunication source who preferred to be anonymous told Gulf News that this cable network is administered by Tata Communications.
“The cut had taken place at a single cable at a time other undersea cables were under maintenance”, he said, adding that this would lead to problems for internet service providers in the region.
The four major cable networks in the Mediterranean Sea are: I-Me-We, Sea-Me-We-4, EIG and TE North are also affected.
Ali Al Ahmad, Chief Corporate Communications Officer at etisalat, told Gulf News: “The cut cable is near the coast of Alexandria and that the company is operating to fix that failure which causes internet disruption.”
A statemet from du says that du customers are not impacted by the cable cut.
“We would like to inform our customers that a cable cut happened in two undersea cables, EIG and SMW 4, as reported by the cables’ operators.
Our customers are not impacted by these cable cuts; both our fixed and mobile voice and internet services are working normally, the statement says. According to telecommunication sources, the cut has an impact on millions of internet users in Asia, Middle East and Africa.
This is the third time such a cable is disrupted after the 2008 submarine cut when causes of the cut, located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, were due to ship’s anchors and seismic activity.
