We’re still waiting to hear what caused damage to several underwater Internet cables; it’s likely to be either especially interesting (in an apocalyptic, WWIII sense) or completely mundane (think rusty old anchors). But either way, affected nations are getting their access back.
India seems to have a solid job of recovering, with estimates putting its connection speeds at anywhere between 70 and 90 percent of their previous standing. At least 60 million people were originally affected by outages and slowdowns, and some fancy rerouting is behind the improvement.
Elsewhere, Dylan Bowman reports that Qatar Telecom’s “loss of capacity has been kept below 40% thanks to what the telecom said was a large number of alternative routes for transmission.” And a spokesman for the UAE’s Du corporation told Bowman, “Our internet access is almost back to normal . . . and data services are 100% restored.”
As for other areas, well . . . Egypt’s Internet is also getting back on its feet, and it seems that Iran wasn’t deeply affected in the first place. Initial reports seemed to suggest the country had been cut off, but Uruknet has countered those.
Now we (and people who have lost Internet connections) are just waiting for repair ships to reach and fix the damaged cables. With the Super Bowl over, thinking about what the ships will find could even become a new betting game.
