MIDDLE EAST/INDIA:A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.
According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited web access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then, phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across the region, slashed by as much as 70 per cent in countries such as India, Egypt and Dubai.
While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority.
But as backroom staff at businesses across the globe scrambled to reroute their traffic or switch on backup satellite systems, experts said the incident highlighted the fragility of a global communications network we take for granted.
"People just don't realise that all these things go through undersea cables - that this is the main way these economies are all linked," said Alan Mauldin, research director of TeleGeography. "Even when you're using wireless internet . . . is done over real, physical connections."
Fibre-optic cables are laid at great cost in huge lines around the globe, directing traffic backwards and forwards across continents. One expert said this accident should be a "wake-up call" to convince governments that keeping such connections secure should be a higher priority.
"Officials must spend more time and energy making sure that critical communications such as mobile phones and the net are adequately protected - whether from disaster or a terrorist strike," said Mustafa Alani, head of security and terrorism at the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai.
"This shows how easy it would be to attack," he said. "When it comes to great technology, it's not about building it - it's how to protect it."
Although the direct effect of the Mediterranean accident is being felt as far east as Bangladesh, the greatest impact has been in India, which has the world's fifth-largest internet population and an economy that is increasingly reliant on hi-tech communications.
The fibre-optic wires in question - called Flag Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 - are some of the most vital information pipelines between Europe and the east. The latter, which runs in an uninterrupted line from western Europe to Singapore, had only recently been opened after a mammoth £500 million (€669 million), three-year installation project.
Between them, the two lines are responsible for about 75 per cent of all connections in the Middle East and south Asia.
"It will depend on how bad the damage is, but they'll find the sections in question and bring them up onto a ship for repair before sinking them again," said Mr Mauldin. "It could take a week or possibly two."