Etisalat breaks silence on Internet disruption

DUBAI — Internet services in the UAE will be fully restored only by next week with repair works yet to begin on two severed undersea cables located off the coast of India and Pakistan, Etisalat officials have confirmed.

Internet traffic in the emirates has been affected since last week due to the fault which has also affected several other countries including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Users in the UAE have been affected considerably as a large part of network services were rendered inoperable including peer-to-peer applications and gaming systems. Many companies and businesses have allegedly lost huge amounts in business due to the disruption with many blaming Etisalat for their losses.

eCompany, Etisalat's IT arm, organised a Press conference yesterday to explain the reasons for their silence on the issue of repair work and assured customers that remedial measures were being taken to ensure that critical services are not disrupted.

"The cable links were severed in an accident. What we understand is that two ships sunk around these areas in heavy monsoon rains and in the process, the links were severed. But we have not received a report on it from our service providers," said Ahmad Abdulkarim Julfar, General Manager of eCompany.

Sea-Me-We 3 (South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 3) and FLAG are the two operators whose undersea cables were severed.

"Nobody expected two of our service providers to face an outage problem but this has happened and we are working to ensure that 100 per cent connectivity is achieved."

The disruption occurred due to faults in two undersea cables off the coast of Mumbai and Karachi resulting in a breakdown of eight international links out of 20.