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Another week, another two ruptured Internet cables. Last week, two undersea cables snapped off the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. Two more were cut this week. These cables carry Internet voice and data traffic to West Asia and India.
Indian outsourcing firms seem to have managed this outage pretty well—for now at least. India has not been plunged into Internet darkness, as some of the more pessimistic experts had predicted a week ago.
The snapping of the cables has predictably led to a lot of conspiracy theories. Was it some terrorist group? Or was it the US government trying to shut Iran’s access to the outside world? There seems to be no basis to all these rumours, but they have persisted nevertheless. It’ll not be long before we get a B-grade Hollywood film where the undercover cop battles terrorists hacking at undersea cables, rather than taking over oil rigs or nuclear installations.
That said, it is time the government and industry assessed risks to the economy from such Internet outages.
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