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Internet, phone lines disrupted following damage to three undersea cables.

PARIS, SAT:

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted Friday after three undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean, France Telecom said.

“The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear,” a statement said, while a spokesman said it was unlikely to have been an attack.The company said it was sending a ship to fix the lines but that it would not arrive until Monday and that it could take until December 31 until normal service was restored.

Most business to business traffic between Europe and Asia was being rerouted through the United States, the firm said, but regular communications between Europe and several Asian countries has been disrupted since early Friday.

Sixty-five per cent of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan were also severely affected.The cables are jointly owned by several dozen different countries. One of the cables is 40,000 kilometres (25,000 miles) long and links 33 different countries while a second is 20,000 kilometres long and serves 14 states.

“If there was just one cable down we could have used the other two,” said France Telecom spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard. “But all three are down so this \puts us in a very difficult situation.”

“This is a very rare situation,” he said.

The cables might have got caught up in trawlers’ nets or there may have been an underwater landslide, said Aymard. One appeared to be fully severed, while the other two seemed to be only partially cut, he added.

Each cable has a “leader” country, he said. Egypt is in charge of the main cable and in this capacity commissioned France Telecom Marine, a subisidiary of the communications giant, to handle the repairs.

The boat with 20 kilometers of spare cable on board will leave very early Saturday and arrive Monday.

In January, five cables in the Middle East and Europe were cut, causing Internet failures in the region.

France Telecomn said it would publish updates on its website on the latest traffic disruption. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, it said

Sumber. www.nst.com.my