An Anchor May Have Taken Down the Internet

We’ve all seen those signs that say “No Anchoring: High Voltage Cables.” And cable areas are marked on all our charts. Well, it may be that one captain wasn’t paying attention today in the Mediterranean.

Internet service has been disrupted and cut across The Middle East, North Africa, and Asia today due to a problem with a large underwater internet cable. India has reportedly lost half of its country’s bandwidth, forcing it to reroute through satellites and other cables. The whole slow-down is having a strong impact on India’s outsourcing and markets.

And as for the anchor issue, well here is what CNN had to say:

“An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed that a boat's anchor may have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed, AP reported. He added that it might take up to a week to repair the fault.”

We’ll keep you posted once we hear confirmation of what caused the outage.