Cable owner impounds 2 ships

From vnunet.com 14/4/08

“Two ships have been impounded in Dubai after satellite images indicated that they may have been responsible for the damage to undersea cables which left large parts of the Middle East without proper internet access.

The loss of the cables caused internet access in some countries to slow by as much as 80 per cent, and harmed performance at call centres in Egypt to the extent that the state telecoms company asked ordinary users to stay offline.”

I’d not heard anything more [about this story] since news broke of the internet outage in the Middle East back in January. Still, I had not forgotten about it entirely. In fact, I alluded to it in a previous post commenting just how fragile the internet as an infrastructure can be. It’s alleged that the two vessels under suspicion strayed into forbidden waters and laid anchor during rough weather to ride it out. They got a lot more than they bargained for, though, when their anchors snagged submarine cables.  After that, I suppose, the heavy swell became the least of their worries.  Now with the ships impounded, it's going to be interesting to see what the next move will be and when.