Broken submarine cable interrupts Internet across region

Internet services in the UAE and across the region have been severly disrupted because of a broken submarine cable.

Internet services and international calls have both been impacted by the break in the cable in the Mediterranean Sea. UAE telcos Etisalat and du both warned users of ongoing disruption to service, while large areas of Cairo are understood have little or no service.

Etisalat said in a statement: "We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and assure them that we will keep them informed of the situation on a continuous basis."

Both telcos said they are working with cable operators FLAG and Sea-Me-We 4 to ensure that the link is restored as soon as possible, and to make sure that redundant links were functioning properly to re-route traffic.

At present it is not clear which Mediterranean cable has been damaged or how. FLAG Telecom, the main operator of global network infrastructure, was not avaiable for comment at the time of writing.