According to conversations inside a global IT company based in Egypt and Italy, an earthquake close to the Italian coasts is what cut six sea Internet cables near Sicily and therefore caused the Internet outage. A letter about the company's problems after the cables were cut says an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale hit the bottom of the Mediterranean and cut the cables.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tareq Kamel said the repeated breakdown of sea cables needs an explanation, especially as the six cables were cut in just 20 minutes, which is unusual. speaking on the sidelines of an investment forum on Sunday evening, he affirmed that the international companies owning the three cables, which provide Internet services to Egypt and were cut last Friday morning, have to provide explanations on the causes of the accidents. Repairs would take some 2-4 days at most, the minister said, pointing out that repairing all cables may take a week.
The minister invited Arab companies to invest in fiber-optic cables to avoid the negative repercussions of cables cut. He ruled out that some companies intended to cut the cables within the framework of world competition. These cables might have been cut for many other reasons, such as bad weather conditions or earthquakes.
There is no alternative to sea cables in transferring international communications and the Internet. Egyptian companies used to pay no attention to sea cables because their feasibility was not great in the past, but the situation is totally different now, Kamel said.
the use of the Internet in Egypt has increased from 20 Gb last year to 30 Gb this year.
The cost of establishing a single sea cable is $150-$180 million, Kamel said, adding that the first-ever Egyptian sea cable will be set up in the first half of next year, the second in the second half of the year, and the third in 2010.
The compensation Egypt would get would depend on the reasons for the cuts. The causes of last January's cable cut are still unknown, although there have been reports that a ship was behind that. With regard to the world economic crisis, Kamel said Egypt would reduce dependence on global markets and depend on the local market due to current conditions.
The government tries hard to maintain the growth rates that have been reached in telecommunications and information technology. There will be a focus on accelerating the mechanization of Egyptian governmental institutions, the minister said. He added that his ministry is currently monitoring the length of international phone calls, as they are linked to tourism and are an indication of the international market's movements. Egypt is trying to increase exports of information technology industry to $2 billion by 2012, he said, pointing out that outsourcing industry could be activated during the coming days due to the current financial crisis and companies' tendency to reduce their expenditure by relying on other companies to do part of their activities.
The minister denied reports that the Egyptian market is saturated by mobile services or fixed communications, noting that mobile phone companies have a million new subscribers every month. In addition, Telecom Egypt succeeded in attracting 700,000 subscribers after it cancelled expenses on fixed telephone installation.
