Sabotage suspected in net outage

Repairs begin on underseas cables

By BRYAN PEARSON

BAGHDAD -- Five undersea cables cut in one week seems just too much of a coincidence, and sabotage is now being suspected in the events that recently caused widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone lines in Gulf states, Egypt and South Asia.

The mystery behind one of the incidents was cleared up when India's Flag telecom blamed "an abandoned (ship's) anchor weighing five to six tons" for cutting through the Falcon cable that links the United Arab Emirates and Oman on Feb. 1.

Flag said repair work was expected to be completed by Sunday.

Repairs to the Flag Europe Asia cable, one of two sliced off Egypt's coast, would also be completed shortly, it added without detailing what caused the cut.

Damage to the other three cables, however, remains shrouded in virtual mystery.

Mediterranean cable SEA-ME-WE4 was also severed, but there was no word on what caused it or how long repairs would take.

Qatari telco Qtel said a fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was also damaged, causing even further disruption.

Newspapers reported that the damage was caused by ships undertaking a roundabout route because of bad weather, but Egypt said onshore video cameras showed no shipping in that part of the Mediterranean when the damage occurred.

The Khaleej Times on Tuesday reported yet another Gulf cable cut, though some believe this incident could have been a matter of one break counted twice.

Hessa al-Jaber, the chief of Qatar's telco regulator, said she doubted the damage was deliberate, while Qtel said services should return to normal in days.

But with so many cables cut, it is hard not to be suspicious, said the DailyTech website.

"As Sherlock Holmes would say, the game is afoot! Many will agree that two undersea cables getting cut in the same location is conceivable. Add a third undersea cable cut two days later and things get strange," it said.

"Throw in a fourth undersea cable getting cut in less than a week and it's hard to not think something strange is going on."

R.S Perhar, secretary of the Internet Service Providers' Assn. of India, is suspicious as well.

"So many incidents happening in one region -- whether it is a coincidence is a moot question," he said.

"The coincidence of so many cables snapping does raise doubts about why this is happening. It needs to be answered."