Submarine cable cut torpedoes Middle East access
Web slowdown hits India, Pakistan too
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A submarine cable in the Mediterranean was cut earlier today, resulting in a dramatic slowdown in internet access for people in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and much of the Middle East.
A spokesman for Flag Telecom, the owner of the severed cable, told the Reg: "It is a problem off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. For some reason ships were asked to anchor in a different place to normal - 8.3km from the beach. One of the ship's anchors cut our cable but there are multiple cuts - we're not the only company having problems."
He said they were in the process of getting a repair ship out to assess the damage but he warned the whole process could take 12 to 15 days even though the ship was in the Med. He said users in India would have a slower internet access as a result.
Such major damage to the internet backbone can cause major problems despite redundancy which allows some re-routing. The loss of so much bandwidth is likely to have an impact.
A Reg reader told us: "We've got some connectivity to our India office, but it's very flakey (currently losing half the packets) which could be a result of overloading. Is very similar to a couple of Christmas' ago when there was a earthquake near Taiwan and it severed undersea cables causing major bottlenecks on what was left to most of Asia for a couple of weeks."
Apart from being serious for the region, the cable break could also hit large UK and US enterprises which have offshored business processes and backoffice functions to companies in India, Pakistan or the Middle East. ®
COMMENTS
After 5 lines down, a pattern?
Apparently five lines have been "cut" now...
http://www.dailytech.com/Bad+to+Worse+Fifth+Undersea+Cable+Cut+in+Middle+East/article10598c.htm
Perhaps a campaign?
Hmm
Hmmm , the problem with cold calls from out sourced self wanking companies is compounded by the fact that all cold call registers give a very wide latitude of exemptions to the rules also since it is automated by block phone number dialling it is able to breach the hidden unlisted number barrier as well !
One person found the most effective and cheapest way to completely block them was to have a telephone answering machine programmed with the old Ma Bell standard disconnected tone set prior to his message . Now since the computer block dialling software is primarily aimed at the worlds largest phone market it has also been programmed to recognize standard US telecommunication tones as well . Thus when it encounters said tones it is automatically programmed to remove the telephone number from the dialling block automatically to skip to next one on the list of contiguous numbers thus !
The real problem with all telephone users mobile(has message bank/text capacity built in plus caller id) lies with end user that jumps instantly to answer the phone ! Thus , by running a call screening device like an answering machine you let it do the work and only those real people business friends family or associates normally leave a message and the cold callers just drop off instantly as no one is home to listen to the unwanted craptastic of the month they have to sell or so they think !
Thus since installing the answering machine on the land line I do not give a rats a! every time the phone rings as 99% of the messages so once or twice a day when passing the machine push the replay button and the machine shows no message of consequence is deleted end of story , no register to sign up no predetermined re-registration at later date to worry about at all !
That is how the cold callers win because of the saying "answer the B! phone now !" thus from a young age we are programmed to answer the phone at all cost ! So if you imagine if 95 percent of all land line users installed an answering machine and did not jump to instantly answer the phone the current market for cold calling would literally die overnight !
As Paris would say "think outside the square !" :)
@Danny
Reading your posts I get the implication that Western support centers always deliver excellent service while Indian (and other outsourcees) ones are always bad, or at least of an inconsistent quality.
The truth couldn't be further from that. I agree that the Indian accent does sound weird to someone not used to it, but the same holds good for regional ones too. I've had trouble understanding customer reps with a heavy Southern (US) accent in the past. So then, should we have local call centers in every region? Someone in California must only call the Southwest regional call center? If they call the Southern one, heaven help them?
I beg to differ. As long as the rep is competent enough to solve your query, the accent shouldn't matter after all it is the same freaking language!! IMHO, a bad call center is a bad call center, whether it is in India, China, or Mars. Companies that outsource should make an attempt to ascertain whether they are getting the same kind of quality from their offshore contractors. After all, quality is what matters first, cost cutting comes afterwards. So, if you really have a problem with customer support blame the company not the foreigner who is only trying to make a honest living like everyone else.
Btw, apologize for the rudeness in my previous post but I got a little ticked off by the stereotyping.
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