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Severed Undersea Cable Perturbs Internet in Algeria

Algérie Télécom has lodged legal action to launch a judicial enquiry into the severing of the undersea optical fibre cable which occured last Thursday (22 October 2015), seriously perturbing international internet connections.

In the night of Saturday (24 October) a cable ship found one end of the cable and immediately started repairs to the 100 m damaged section while continuing to search for the other half.  Weather permitting, it is thought that the cable will be fully repaired by the end of this week.

The submarine cable links Annaba to Marseille and Algérie Télécom has declared that the cable may have been "sawn" by the anchor of one of the two vessels on the roads in the vicinity.  The incident has severly affected Algérie Télécom and its customers.

Thanks to the re-routing of traffic though the Algiers/Palerma undersea cable, internet connections have not been completely cut but  the incident has deprived Algérie Télécom of 80% of its international bandwidth, resulting in slow connections and network saturation.

Zakia Rahali (Budd Algiers) reports that she is relying heavily on her smartphone to access emails but apart from this, it’s business as usual.

Information provided by:

Zakia Rahali, Budd Algiers

Tel: +213 21 44 66 76 or +213 21 54 40 39

Mobile: +213 661 50 76 10

Email: zakia.rahali@budd-pni.com

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