Internet service disruptions continued Friday in parts of the Middle East for the third day running after two Mediterranean undersea cables were damaged as net users were urged to stop downloading films and music to give priority to badly affected businesses, according to dpa. Egypt has 50 per cent of its Internet capacity, which will be increased to 80 per cent within two days, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Tarek Kamel, told reporters Thursday. Unconfirmed reports said the damage of a cable might have been caused by a boat's anchor at the Egyptian port of Alexandria. But the minister said the outages could have been caused by bad weather. However, until the cables are brought back to the surface, the exact cause can not be determined, a spokesman for Alcatel-Lucent was quoted as saying by the Saudi Arab News daily. The firms operating the submarine cable system, FLAG Telecoms and SE-ME-WE 4, are currently working to repair the damage, Kamel said. The severed links are two long submarine cables that link South East Asia to Europe via the Middle East and India. Disruptions hitting Egypt's Internet service providers were between 70 and 75 per cent while call centres were affected by 30 percent, according to the minister. High technology services were the worst affected in many parts of th region with many banks in Egypt resorting to fax machines and manual means in their operations, media reports said. The Egyptian government urged net users to refrain from downloading video and audio material in an attempt to ease the pressure on the networks and give priority to businesses. "An overload on the alternative cable will further slow down the Internet service and many businesses," Kamel said. Disruptions have been reported in Saudi Arabia but there is no official estimate of the damages, according to Arab News. Outages were also reported in the Unite Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain where businesses rely heavily on electronic means.
