Friday, France Telecom announced that three undersea cables were cut and traffic is greatly disturbed between Europe, Asia and Middle East. The cables that are cut are the Sea Me We3, Sea Me We4 and FLAG FEA. Two of the cables are run by a consortium of network companies, while the third is operated by Reliance Globalcom. A France Telecom Marine cable ship is on its way to repair the damages.

The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear. However, some seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before the cut was detected.

Many countries were affected by the outage, including India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Malaysia, which all lost a significant percentage on their voice traffic to Europe. Eighty-two percent of India's voice traffic capability to Europe was out of service early Friday. About 3,000 and 5,000 Internet routes in the regions were also off-line early Friday.

The company noted that it would be by December 31 that the situation would be back to normal, with Sea Me We4 being operational by December 25.

Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent. Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the U.S.

Some experts believe that the interruption in Internet and phone communications could have serious repercussions on regional economies. The local financial markets could be affected, who trade with European and US markets, where the speed at which they get live data will be compromised. /RTTNews/

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