Internet and telephone communications between Europe , the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted Friday after three undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean , France Telecom said .
in the Mediterranean
internet telephone communication europe middle east asia severely disrupt friday undersea cable damage mediterranean france telecom say
Internet and telephone communications between Europe , the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted Friday after three undersea cables were damaged <m> in the Mediterranean </m> , France Telecom said .
Severed cables bring down phone lines linking Europe , Asia , Mideast
Internet and telephone communications between Europe , the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted Friday after three undersea cables were damaged <m> in the Mediterranean </m> , France Telecom said .
`` The causes of the cut , which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia , on sections linking Sicily to Egypt , remain unclear , '' a statement said , while a spokesman said it was unlikely to have been an attack .
The company said it was sending a ship to fix the lines but that it would not arrive until Monday and that it could take until December 31 before normal service was restored .
Most business-to-business traffic between Europe and Asia was being rerouted through the United States , the firm said , but regular communications between Europe and several Asian countries has been disrupted since early Friday .
Sixty-five per cent of traffic to India was down , while services to Singapore , Malaysia , Saudi Arabia , Egypt , Taiwan and Pakistan were also severely affected , a spokesman said Friday evening .
An afternoon toll released by France Telecom said that 100 percent of traffic was lost in the Maldives Indian Ocean islands , with the Gulf state of Qatar and Djibouti , on the Gulf of Aden , also losing over 70 percent of their traffic .
Egypt 's state news agency MENA reported that the cuts happened off the coast of Sicily at 10:00 am ( 0800 GMT ) on Friday , with Indian-registered Reliance GlobalCom directing a submarine cable repair company to head to the region to fix the cables .
The agency added that services were being rerouted to backup cables and satellites to compensate for the failures .
The cables are jointly owned by several dozen different countries .
One of the cables is 40,000 kilometres ( 25,000 miles ) long and links 33 different countries while a second is 20,000 kilometres long and serves 14 states .
`` If there was just one cable down we could have used the other two , '' said France Telecom spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard .
`` But all three are down so this puts us in a very difficult situation .
`` This is a very rare situation , '' he said .
The cables might have got caught up in trawlers ' nets or there may have been an underwater landslide , said Aymard .
One appeared to be fully severed , while the other two seemed to be only partially cut , he added .
Each cable has a `` leader '' country , he said. Egypt is in charge of the main cable and in this capacity commissioned France Telecom Marine , a subsidiary of the communications giant , to handle the repairs .
The boat , with 20 kilometres ( 12.5 miles ) of spare cable on board , will leave very early Saturday and arrive Monday .
In January , five cables in the Middle East and Europe were cut , causing Internet failures in the region and damaging traffic through the region 's important call centre industry .
France Telecom said it would publish updates on its website on the latest traffic disruption .
Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected , it said .