High-technology services across large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

Industry experts are blaming damage to two undersea cables but it is not known what caused the damage.

Reports say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure.

Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East.

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News source: CNN

Here in Europe, things are only considerably slower, with more packet losses...

(India is off-Line?) Oh shit, There goes Tech Support...

Here in Egypt we got affected badly, based on the local ISP we are running on 30% of our original bandwidth.

mmm its a little slow here in Australia, but not that much of a difference

In total 4 cables have been "cut". One after the other, within 8 days. 1 is a human error, 2 is a fuck up, 3 is fishy, 4 is down right suspicious.

Reports are that it wasn't a dropped anchor, but some sort of mechanical problem - complete bullshit.

Might be fundamentalists trying to rid themselves of the evil internet.

hmm i think they are hiding something, its not logic.

I like the way you think.

Sure it was ... They probably just forgot to oil the Data Transfer Booster Gears...


...It does seem a rather odd target for an attack however.

I doubt Bin Laden would go after teh net, I mean after all everyman needs his pr0n right? But I wouldn't put it past the NSA, perhaps they want to install some "3rd party" equipment.

its the MPAA

Here's an update ...

Highlights from "Firm: Ship's anchor cut Mideast Internet cable" Story:

• Three undersea Internet cables off Dubai, Egypt to be online in days, officials say
• Cut cables hurt Mideast Web traffic last week, prompting conspiracy theories
• Severed undersea cables quite common and sabotage unlikely, analyst says
• Analyst: "Tin-foil hat crowd" suspects U.S. military or terrorists behind snafu

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News source: CNN