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Damage to the submarine cable in Egypt has disrupted internet traffic around the world.
Damage to an undersea cable disrupted global internet traffic for hours on Tuesday. Among others, cloud services from Google, Amazon and Microsoft were affected. It hit the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) submarine cable, which connects East Asia to Europe, The Register reports.
The 25,000 km cable follows the route of Hong Kong – South China Sea – Bay of Bengal – Arabian Sea – Gulf of Aden – Red Sea – Suez Canal, then runs overland in Egypt to finally cross the Mediterranean in three branches in France, Italy and to end Greece. Branches along the route connect India, Saudi Arabia, and Djibouti, among other countries.
Damage occurred on the ground and was quickly repaired
However, the outage appears to have occurred on the short land route in Egypt, which is why a quick fix is possible. No reason was given for the damage. If the cable is damaged at sea, repairs will take days, maybe even weeks.
Most of the world’s internet traffic runs over submarine cables. AAE-1 alone has a capacity of 40 Tbps. In contrast, disruptions in cables can quickly lead to limitations. There are also concerns that the cables could be intentionally damaged to harm the global economy.
