Internet Outage in the Near East - 3 Undersea Cables Cut

If any application you use or maintain depends on connectivity between Europe and Asia, it is worth noting that 3 undersea cables have been cut between Sicily and Tunisia. France Telecom has observed the following outages at the following times:

• "Sea Me We 4" at 7:28am
• "Sea Me We 3" at 7:33am
• FLAG at 8:06am

A first appraisal of the situation suggests the following impact on traffic (in percentage of out of service capacity):

• Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
• Djibouti: 71% out of service
• Egypt: 52% out of service
• United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
• India: 82% out of service
• Lebanon: 16% out of service
• Malaysia: 42% out of service
• Maldives: 100% out of service
• Pakistan: 51% out of service
• Qatar: 73% out of service
• Syria: 36% out of service
• Taiwan: 39% out of service
• Yemen: 38% out of service
• Zambia: 62% out of service

Note that this is suggestive of telephone communications; internet connectivity will be more or less correlative. In addition to the aforementioned countries, traffic to Jordan and any traffic that runs through Reunion Island will be impacted, as well. While some repairs will be affected by 25 December, it is thought that all three cables will not be repaired until the 31st. For more information or to follow the event more closely, see France Telecom's press release.