Mumbai, January 31, 2008 - Internet users in India struggled with slow surfing speeds on account of the breakdown of two undersea cables in the Mediterranean.  

An anchoring ship off Egypt’s Alexandria coast has damaged Indian-owned FLAG cable, and also SEA-ME-WE on Wednesday morning. Repair teams had already left for the site.

A top official of Reliance group that owns FLAG said the repair will take around 10 days.

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Wednesday’s disturbance in SEA-ME-WE and Indian-owned FLAG cables had not been answered up till now.

However, Indian BPOs remained mainly unaffected.

According to a WNS representative, during the collapse, the company managed to connect to the US pipleline for its UK operations and thus avoiding any downtime.

Similarly, spokespersons from TCS, Firstsource and Tech Mahindra said their functionings remained unaffected.

However, business and personal usage across a wide swathe of the Middle East was interrupted.

In Cairo, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology stated that the cut in the global communications cable had resulted to a partial disruption of Internet services and other telecommunications across much of Egypt.

Emergency teams were trying to discover alternate routes, including by satellites, to end the disruptions.

Internet service also was interrupted in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf, which markets itself as a top business and luxury tourist spotub.

International telephone service was also affected by the cable break.