It’s been a busy, crazy week in the Middle East. Forget Iraq. Forget Gaza. Forget Iran. The big Middle East story was the damage to four telecommunications cables in the region. Actually, don’t forget Iran — they might be involved after all.

Last week, two of the world’s fiber-optic cables — Flag Telecom’s Europe-Asia cable and the consortium-owned SEA-ME-WE 4 system — were cut. That cut off several Middle East countries, not including Iran, and pinched access to India.

next Flag reported that its Falcon cable — which runs amidst Dubai and Oman — was cut. And thereupon a fourth cable — the Qatar-UAE Submarine Cable System — was said to be cut. That last cable suffered a ability outage, not a physical cut, according to the news site ArabianBusiness.com.

Repairs complete by Sunday

The good news, Flag Telecom reports, is that it has repair ships on the job and its two cables should be fully repaired by Sunday.

For the Europe-Asia cut amoung Alexandria, Egypt, and Palermo, Italy, “the ship loaded with spares has reached the fault location and has initiated the repair work,” Flag reported on its daily bulletin. It said there had been some interruption on capacity to London, but customers had been re-routed.

On the Falcon cut, Flag said, “The ship loaded with spares, marine experts and optical engineers have reached the site yesterday. The crew has recovered the one end of the cable and cable-joining work is in progress.”

Flag reported it had found the abandoned anchor that caused the two cuts last week.

Conspiracy Theories

But news of four cable breaks in one week had a big effect on the blogosphere. Among the conspiracies suggested were that the U.S. engineered the breaks in order to cut Iran off from the Web while the U.S. launched an attack during the Super Bowl.

“A…

Orginal post by Top Tech News

It’s been a busy, crazy week in the Middle East. Forget Iraq. Forget Gaza. Forget Iran. The big Middle East story was the damage to four telecommunications cables in the region. Actually, don’t forget Iran — they might be involved after all.

Last week, two of the world’s fiber-optic cables — Flag Telecom’s Europe-Asia cable and the consortium-owned SEA-ME-WE 4 system — were cut. That cut off several Middle East countries, not including Iran, and pinched access to India.

thereupon Flag reported that its Falcon cable — which runs amoung Dubai and Oman — was cut. And soon after a fourth cable — the Qatar-UAE Submarine Cable System — was said to be cut. That last cable suffered a capability outage, not a physical cut, according to the news site ArabianBusiness.com.

Repairs complete by Sunday

The good news, Flag Telecom reports, is that it has repair ships on the job and its two cables should be fully repaired by

Sunday. For the Europe-Asia cut amoung Alexandria, Egypt, and Palermo, Italy, “the ship loaded with spares has reached the fault location and has initiated the repair work,” Flag reported on its daily bulletin. It said there had been some interruption on capacity to London, but customers had been re-routed.

On the Falcon cut, Flag said, “The ship loaded with spares, marine experts and optical engineers have reached the site yesterday. The crew has recovered the one end of the cable and cable-joining work is in progress.”

Flag reported it had found the abandoned anchor that caused the two cuts last week.

Conspiracy Theories

But news of four cable breaks in one week had a big effect on the blogosphere. Among the conspiracies suggested were that the U.S. engineered the breaks in order to cut Iran off from the Web while the U.S. launched an attack during the Super Bowl.

“A…

Orginal post by Top Tech News