CAIRO: The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) continued to assure speculators that foul play and ships were not the reasons behind the damage of the two undersea cables that have disrupted internet activity since last Wednesday. His statement comes after a fourth internet cable linking Qatar and the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday, further slowing down internet connections in the Gulf area. Egypt, however, did not suffer any further damages. Akil Bashir, Telecom Egypt chairman, said one of the company's engineers was sent on board the repair ship to examine the reasons behind the malfunction. The process will be filmed to ensure the reasons behind the damaged cables are transparent to the public. "It is impossible that foul play is the reason behind the cable damages. If someone were to damage the cables they would have to get on a ship to reach the location, Bashir told the press. MCIT Minister Tarek Kamel and the ministry's emergency task force received a report from the Minister of Transport Mohamed Mansour indicating that no ships crossed the site where the two marine cables were cut off under the Mediterranean Sea. According to the report, a maritime transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area where the cables are located 12 hours before and after the malfunction and found that no ships passed that point in that time. Moreover, the committee clarified that the site is a restricted area. "Earthquakes and bad weather conditions have been responsible for similar damages before, Kamel said. Based on the report, National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) Chairman Amr Badawy informed the owners of the marine cables - Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) and South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) - of the report findings. Meanwhile, internet efficiency in Egypt reached about 80 percent after France Telecom extended capacities of 5 GB/second to Telecom Egypt and other internet service providers (ISPs) in the country. Repair operations will kick off today and it is expected to take several days to re-install the service to its original capacity. Disturbances to the internet connection are expected to continue for another ten other days, the ministry's office told Daily News Egypt. "Business operations have returned to normal and the complaints we are receiving have decreased drastically, the ministry's office said. The ministry stressed that they have been extremely transparent with all information regarding the internet outage, adding that "there is no conspiracy theory here and it's only a matter of time and we'll find out exactly what happened. The minister reiterated his calls on home users to limit their downloading activities to relieve the pressure on the backup cables being used.
