FLAG telecom, the internet company who owns the cables off the coast of Egypt that were cut last week, is busy repairing them with two ships at the site.
The cause of one of the cut cables has been found, and is reported by CNN to have been an abandoned six ton ship’s anchor. An the AP reports that the company plans to place an alternative cable from Egypt to France, one that is more resiliant and less likely to be damaged.
At the same time, a third ship from the company is repairing the internet cable off the coast of Oman.
In the meanwhile, conspiracy theories in the echo chamber of the internet about this being a plan to cut off Iran as a prelude to war keep getting wilder, with wider coverage but more and more out of date.
Apparently there was some slowdown of the Iranian internet, but that the companies running the internet soon arranged to reroute their signals via Turkey to avoid the break.
That’s why I had figured. Tehran is quite near to Turkey, so would have other lines of cable that didn’t rely on underseas cable. This caused some slowdowns, but the “complete” internet outage claimed by some websites was not true.
As for “terrorism”, according to an expert cited in the CNN article, that too requires a bit more expertise to find the cable (i.e. submarines, frogmen).
And cutting the cable wouldn’t cut off the US military: they use their own satellite internet for security reasons for most of their communications, and even ordinary troops in isolated areas use satellite internet dishes for routine email and communications.
So much for conspiracy theories.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket.
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7 users commented in " That cut internet cable is being fixed; Iran internet quickly rerouted in the crisis. "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackNancy–I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I do have some honest questions about the CNN article. I’m not a tech person or a sailor, so these are probably dumb questions. But here goes: (1) What causes “scores” of underwater cables to break every year? (2) How does an anchor fall off an abandoned ship? (3) What are the odds that a falling anchor would just happen to hit and sever an under- water cable? I know there are many cables, but the ocean is a gargantuan place. Seems like it would have about the same probability as a blind/deaf person firing an M-16 at randon into the sky and bringing down a Cessna.
The CNN piece reads, to me, like a propaganda piece (unrelated to the unlikely eventuality of the U.S. preparing for an imminent attack on Iran), but I don’t know enough about the subject to challenge it. If you see this post, I would be very interested in your thoughts.
By the way, I appreciated your excellent story about the Storm Superworm, and cited it in my BNN article on Putin some time back. –Mark Mercer
The main reason I am not a conspiracy theorist is that my blog is regularly visited by a fellow poultry farmer who lives in Iran, and he logged on during the time when the conspiracy theorists were saying that Iran was completely off line..
1) minor cables probably break all the time. During the earthquake off of Taiwan, we were out for six weeks, although if we traveled to the main town we could log on slowly via an internet cafe.
2) Anchors don’t fall off ships. The cables holding anchors snap from stress, for example during storms.
3)the odds of hitting an underseas cable are low, I agree. Hence conspiracy.
But Iran can obviously reroute through Turkey, and since satellite internet has been around for years. That fact, and the fact that obviously ordinary folks weren’t cut off long, makes me think if it were done it was done by a terror group, not Bush, who would have arranged the Turkish cable to be cut “accidentally” also.
Terrorism? Only if they had the expertise, and if it was terrorism, it means they had some rogue government in charge. It’s not easy finding the cable unless you know the GPS location…and it would be against a government (Egyptian government) not the US.
Thanks for the quick and informative reply. That clears up my questions.
Don’t you just love conspiracy theories? My favorite: that our government planted explosives at the WTC to bring it down demolition style. Can you imagine the logistics of planting detonators inside two skyscrapers with 600 jillion offices full of busy people–and not being noticed? Great comedy material, if the story itself were not so tragic. –MM
conspiracy or not… iran is offline.. so some one here is lying…. http://www.internettrafficreport.com/history/267.htm (cant argue with facts)
I’ve also seen this internet traffic report. I’m assuming the 100 percent packet loss represents one particular client, but how can we explain this?
In response to yuckfou, that website is obviously looking only at one internet provider or is completely wrong. How do I know this? Well it may be because I’m posting from Florida right now…oh and the website http://www.internettrafficreport.com/history/111.htm is saying we have no internet! How can this be! That website is wrong. If all of florida was dead then I wouldn’t be able to post right now would I?
Reply to mark
Yeah? Explain WTC 7 then.
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