not a disaster, but a bit of annoyance for a lot of people
TBH my initial concerns were more with the unfortunates who must have been on board the ship which pulled up the cables (who have not been given much of a mention in the media :hopeless:) Ships do not drag anchor unless they are being subjected to extreme weather conditions (waves/storm) which is what has been going on in various parts of the world – at least I think the Egyptian Navy/Coastguard has picked up all the crew and secured the vessel..
the far end of one of those cables is actually in Malaysia, which would certainly explain why my family were having problems making international phone calls.
Telekom Malaysia have rerouted all the outbound circuits so they work but inbound from Britain is still flakey (managed to speak to my mum this morning but took about 3 tries to get through…)
This has wider implications though.
The man who runs the Egyptian equivalent of Ofcom was on the news saying he had asked all his countries citizens nicely to refrain from using youtube etc or excessive surfing to ensure business calls etc can get through until the cable is fixed.
but if they don’t heed his advice the comms companies and govts can take matters into their own hands, all big routers (the huge ones that ISPs and Telcos use) can be made to prioritise certain traffic – something they are all trying to introduce to the wider internet anyway (if it hasn’t already been done).
