DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The Middle East spent its first workday after key communication cables were cut coping with slow and spotty Internet access, as a French repair crew began fixing the damaged undersea lines.
Telecommunication providers from Cairo to Dubai continued Sunday to scramble to reroute voice and data traffic through potentially costly detours in Asia and North America after the lines running under the Mediterranean Sea were damaged Friday. The cause of the cuts is not yet known.
It is the second time this year the cables have been severed, knocking out Internet and telephone access for many in the Middle East. The earlier cut, in late January, was apparently caused by a ship's anchor.
A ship operated by France Telecom's marine division arrived Sunday afternoon at what it believes is the accident site south of Sicily, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.
The crew released a robotic submarine named "Hector" to search for two of the three damaged cables, which are owned by a consortium that includes the Paris-based telecommunications giant. Once found, the cable ends will be pulled to the surface and repaired on deck - a process that could take several days.
"We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it's a very huge cable," Aymard said. He said the company hopes to have the first line fixed by Thursday.
The third cable is operated by India's Reliance Globalcom. Officials at that company could not be reached for comment.
Regional communication providers' efforts to redirect voice and data traffic brought some areas back online over the weekend. Still, rolling outages continued to plague large parts of the region.
Etisalat of the UAE said Internet service remained at about 85 per cent capacity Sunday. The Abu Dhabi-based company was redirecting some of its data traffic through South Asia, spokesman Saeed al-Badi said.
Dubai-based Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., better known as Du, said it was sending data and international voice traffic through Asia and the western United States.
"Due to the diversion of all traffic ... eastbound ... customers may be experiencing slower Internet access time than usual. This is the same for all Internet traffic from the region and is likely to continue until the cables are repaired," the company said.
Egypt's Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology said the country had restored some 80 per cent of its Internet services Sunday. Access had been knocked out Friday and much of Saturday.
The ministry said banks, the stock exchange and other financial institutions have been receiving full services while call centres are still having some problems.
Bahrain Telecommunications Co. urged customers to stick to applications like web browsing and email, which use less bandwidth than file-sharing or other data-heavy uses.
Jordan Telecom said the country's Internet capacity was "better" than in some neighbouring countries, with connection speeds down by as much as 25 per cent. There were no major outages in Lebanon but some users experienced spotty access.
In Yemen, service resumed after widespread outages Sunday but remained slow.
The disruptions are affecting big business and regular folks alike.
Dubai-based airline Emirates said it had to cope with a 30 per cent slowdown in online booking times and initially faced telephone problems because of the cuts.
In Sudan, residents have had virtually no Internet access. That in turn has disrupted the delivery of other services.
Sudanese cash machines didn't work on the first day of the cuts, and the official news agency had no way of delivering news to its newspaper subscribers. News editors walked into the SUNA offices with their memory cards to pick up the latest news.
