Damaged undersea cables cause internet and phone disruptions

Dubai: Damage to two major undersea cables caused Internet and phone disruptions throughout the UAE and the world on Thursday.

The damage to the fiber optic cables, which connect western Europe to the Middle East and Asia, occurred off of the Egyptian coast.

“du has been informed that the cuts on both FLAG and SEA-ME-WE4 cables occurred at approx 12km north of Alexandria. This incident has impacted international and regional telecom services from operators across the Gulf, Egypt Middle East and India. The two cables are 400m apart at this point which suggests that a ship has dragged its anchor through both cables,” said Osman Sultan, du’s CEO, in an emailed statement.

The statement also said that the repair process has started on both lines. No timeframe has been set for the repairs, but initial estimates indicate it will take at least two weeks to repair the FLAG cable.

Some businesses in the UAE have reported outages, but others have said there has been only “a minimal impact” on Internet services.