On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 22:56:39 -0500 (EST) Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
Caution: upon further research it appears there may be some language misscommunication in some of the reports; and some of the outages may be multiple reports of the same incidents.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February115.xml§ion=theuae Confirming international media reports, an Etisalat official yesterday told Khaleej Times that the cable network was not completely severed, though the damage slowed down the already affected system. He did not give any further details regarding the cause of damage. [...] This is the third incident of its kind in the area since January 30 since the cables were first damaged in the Mediterranean and then off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and south Asia.
FLAG restoration update information: http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%...
http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21567&email=html is probably as authoritative a source as one can find for what happened. It says there were two cuts in the Mediterranean (SEA-ME-WE 4 near Marseille) and Flag Telecom's Europe-Asia cable near Alexandria. The Flag Telecom Falcon cable was cut between UAE and Oman, and the Qatar-UAE cable failed due to a power issue. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb