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Internet service badly disrupted

MUSCAT: Internet service in Oman and other Gulf countries was badly disrupted yesterday and Omantel officials attributed failure of undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea for the fault.

Residents said Internet service was either non-existent or very slow. The gravity of the outage varied from area to area and according to the service provider.

Three cables linking Italy and Egypt failed for as yet unknown reasons, a senior Reliance GlobalCom official in Dubai said yesterday. Internet service between Europe and the Middle East was also disrupted yesterday. France Telecom said break in three undersea cables had disrupted telephone traffic between Europe and the Asia-Middle East region.

The situation may not improve before Christmas Day and communications may not be back to normal until New Year’s Eve, the French company said in a statement.

Shaheed Al Sateeh, Middle East sales director for Reliance GlobalCom, said: “We know three cables have been cut. We still don’t know why or where. They cover all the Middle East and India and other countries.”

“We have no more information. A ship has been sent out to locate the place where the cables were cut,” he said.

Egypt’s state news agency Mena reported that the cuts happened off the coast of Sicily at 10am (0800GMT) yesterday.

Reliance GlobalCom has directed a submarine cable repair company to head to the region to fix the cables, Mena reported.

The agency reported that services were being rerouted to backup cables and satellite to compensate for the failures.

The services are expected to improve by around 0330GMT today, Mena added. France Telecom said the breach happened “between Italy and Tunisia on sections linking Sicily to Egypt.”

“Traffic from Europe towards Algeria and Tunisia was not affected but from Europe towards the Middle East and Asia is more or less interrupted,” the French national telecoms operator said.

The company said it had alerted the Raymond Croze, one of its two maintenance ships present in the Mediterranean zone.

France Telecom said the situation is likely to improve from December 25 and return to normal on December 31.