How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people

Fiber optic cables are the backbone to the entire internet. Miles of these cables span continents, sending data as pulses of light from one destination to another. But what happens if the destination is somewhere across the ocean or if data needs to travel between two islands? Believe it or not, there are thousands of miles of submarine fiber optic cables connecting continents and countries where land based cables cannot. Often, these submarine cables are the only edge connecting two nodes, a bridge. If this bridge is ever severed, then millions would lose connection to the rest of the global internet.

On January 30, 2008, two of the undersea fiber optic cables off the coast of Egypt were severed. The initial cause was thought to be a ship trying to anchor off the coast of Egypt in severe weather conditions caused the accident, but a later report determined that it was an abandoned anchor. This incident cut connections for 75 million people in India and the Middle East. Many believe this to be a “wake-up call” to show how vulnerable the network is to natural disasters or attack. Although most of the damage was felt in the Middle East and India, many American companies were having trouble with connections to Indian based support services. The accompanying image shows the undersea network of fiber optics and the detailed extent of the outage.