Internet disrupted in Africa, Asia due to undersea cable damage
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An outage affecting major systems that connect 19 countries on three continents has caused massive disruption to internet connectivity.
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Workers fixing undersea internet cables (Archive)
A monitoring service said that internet connections in several parts of Africa and East Asia were noticeably slower on Tuesday, probably due to a major breakdown “consistent with a disruption to international transits," The National News reported.
According to the website, Somalia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Madagascar, and Pakistan were among the countries affected by the disruptions.
“Ongoing disruption to internet connectivity in multiple countries, with high impact to Africa, Asia and Oceania; the incident is being attributed to outages affecting the AAE1 [Asia-Africa-Europe 1] and SMW5 [South-East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5] submarine cable networks,” said NetBlocks, a watchdog that tracks network disruptions and shutdowns.
ℹ️ Update: Metrics show ongoing disruption to internet connectivity in multiple countries, with high impact to Africa, Asia and Oceania; the incident is being attributed to outages affecting the AAE1 and SMW5 submarine cable networks per reports 📉 pic.twitter.com/IVh7R0wr4t
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) June 7, 2022
Stretching for more than 23,000 kilometers, the AAE1 undersea cable is one of four major systems that connect 19 countries on the three continents, according to a report by the Submarine Telecoms Forum.
The National News said that "about 380 undersea cables form the backbone of the internet but experts have long issued warnings that they are vulnerable to major breakdowns, which, in the past, have involved ship anchors, collapsing undersea rock formations and tectonic activity."
Pakistan's Telecommunications authority confirmed that two cuts to the AAE1 and the SMW5 cables near Egypt have been repaired, while another cut to the Imewe cable near Italy is still being repaired.
The authority announced that all internet services in Pakistan have returned to normal.
