Internet Cable Now Repaired, So When Will ETISALAT Unfreeze Youtube and Torrent Trackers?
Internet connections across the Middle East should return to normal on Tuesday, with all three undersea cables connecting the region to Europe repaired and at full capacity.
The fibre-optic lines running along the Mediterranean Sea floor have been undergoing repairs by French and Italian maintenance crews for the past two weeks. All three were damaged, almost simultaneously, on the morning of Dec 19. The same cables were also damaged in January last year.
No official explanation has been given for the cuts, but speculation centres on a possible undersea earthquake.
Etisalat said yesterday that all three cables – and most importantly the high-speed Sea-Me-We4 line that carries the majority of the company’s traffic – have been fully repaired. Cable operators and internet providers spent the day reconfiguring the technical systems that direct traffic through different lines, with full service expected to resume this morning.
Qtel, the Qatari national telecommunications company, said late yesterday that services in the country had also returned to 100 per cent of regular capacity.
While connections slowed to a crawl in the hours following the cuts, most users reported slow but reliable connections within 24 hours, and services have returned almost to normal in recent days. But some bandwidth-hungry web services remain blocked or restricted by internet providers.
In the UAE, access to popular video-sharing websites such as YouTube, and online gaming platforms such as Microsoft’s Xbox Live, has been restricted. Etisalat officials could not confirm whether the services would become available again today…SOURCE
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