CAIRO: For the second time this year, Egypt's information highway stood still due to a cut-off in the fiber optic cables south of Italy, halting internet access in the region, according to a press statement by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). The cut-off happened in three cables, Flag Global Network, SEA-ME-WE 3 and SEA-ME-WE 4 which travel beneath the Mediterranean Sea, approximately 10 km from Alexandria. The reason behind the failure in the cables still remains unidentified. Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamel formed an emergency team to work on solving the severe technical problem. The team is currently contacting the companies that manage those three cables to identify the estimated time it will take to resolve the issue as well as to come up with possible alternative cables in Europe which can supply Egypt. According to the press statement, Flag Global Network has contacted the international company, MECMA, which specializes in fixing fiber optic cables, and assigned them the task of resolving the matter, which is expected to take several days. These companies said that several Arab countries were affected by the outage. The ministry is trying to divert internet traffic to alternative routes that travel from South East Asia though Suez and through satellite. The ministry's statement that was released at around 5 pm on Friday said that the service is expected to improve in 12 hours. Internet users have been frantically calling their internet service providers customer service hotline looking for answers, mostly to find an automated recorded message on the other end, informing them that there is a "general technical problem. The customer service agents at Vodafone Egypt also confirmed to Daily News Egypt that the internet outage is due to a cut-off in the in the fiber optic cables. Last January, there was an internet outage in Egypt, which was also due to a failure in the cables Flag Global Network and SEAMEWE 4. Several cables were cut-off simultaneously resulting in an outage that extended beyond the region. It wasn't clear whether it was a coincidence or deliberate sabotage. At the time, the MCIT ordered compensation to be given to internet subscribers for the service disruptions. ADSL subscribers were not charged for January's service and dial-up users were not charged for the month's calls. According to the ministry, the TE-North, connecting Alexandria to Marseilles, France, is under construction. Egypt Telecom, the company responsible for the cable, would finish working on it in nine month. The National Telecom Regulatory Authority has also authorized two Egyptian companies to build two sea cables to provide alternative routes, the ministry said.
