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Internet service in Egypt restored in about 10 days

Internet services in Egypt will not be restored to normal for at least 10 days after two undersea cables were cut last week week, causing severe disruptions, the telecommunications ministry said on Saturday.

The cable cuts near Egypt disrupted Web access in parts of the Middle East and Asia.

The ministry said it expected work to repair the cables in the Mediterranean Sea to start tomorrow and take several days.

"Thus, the disorder in the Internet network would continue for a period that may not be less than 10 days," it said in a statement.

Egypt said about 55 percent of its Internet capacity had been restored after emergency teams were formed to find alternative connection routes.

"This is expected to increase gradually," the statement said.

A third cable, off the coast of Dubai, was also damaged, its owner FLAG Telecom said on Saturday, but Egypt said the latest break did not affect its Internet connections.

Telecommunications Minister Tarek Kamel said on Thursday it would take at least a week to fix the breaches, which are in segments of two intercontinental cables known as SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG.

It was not immediately possible to gauge the impact of the disruption on financial institutions. The Egyptian stock market said the incident had no effect on trading, the Al-Alam al-Youm financial newspaper reported on Saturday.

Last week some traders said transactions had been slower and that several international trading orders failed to go through. The central bank expressed its frustration with the service and said it would seek alternatives for the banking system if similar disruptions were to happen again.
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