Cable damage under the sea first disrupted life of the net users in India, Egypt and around. The 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE were among the affected. All voice calls, corporate data and video traffic were also affected. Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, "The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia." A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. The first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23 and was unreported. But the 30th January cut in cables affected UAE very badly. The network has been re-routed through Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia and is near normal now. In case you wanted to know: Almost 90 per cent of Internet traffic is routed through undersea cables and only 10 per cent is done through the satellite.

The affected subs include SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

Source