Dubai - For the second consecutive day, Internet users in the UAE faced difficulties in accessing various web sites while Etisalat officials said the problem may continue for the next few days.
"The situation remains unchanged since Tuesday when the fault was detected. We still don't know the cause for the breakdown of the submarine cable and there are plans of deploying a cable ship soon to resolve the problem," said an Etisalat spokesperson. Internet traffic in the emirates have been sporadically disrupted since Tuesday due to a cut in submarine cable located between Bombay and Penang. The cause for the problem is yet to be identified.
The disruption in the cable link has slowed down Internet traffic considerably with high bandwidth applications such as gaming and peer-to-peer applications being affected to a large extent.
Chat applications such as MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger were also difficult to access and operate.
Komal Ramani, a student, said: "I log on to the Internet throughout the day to download songs and movies. But since yesterday, I haven't been able to do any of that. The Internet speed is quite slow and all my friends are also complaining about how it has affected them," she said.
Following an earlier disruption in overseas links, Etisalat increased its links from 15 to 19 to ensure additional redundancy. The redundant links deployed by Etisalat for such an eventuality has meant that normal Internet browsing and essential traffic will continue to work smoothly.
Etisalat also mentioned that they were working closely with the international service provider for repairing these submarine cables to ensure that the links are restored at the earliest. "But we cannot give a time-frame as to when the problem will be solved," added the spokesperson.By Prerna Suri
© Khaleej Times 2005
