![]() Mauldin says extra landing sites are being built along Egypt’s shore, such as at Ras Ghareb, to allow cables to dock in different locations. That’s all the more reason to further protect routes around Egypt. ![]() (Satellite systems also rely on wired connections to connect to the internet.) “They aren't going to handle carrying hundreds of terabits between continents. Satellites are used for providing connectivity in rural locations or as emergency backups, but they can’t replace physical infrastructure entirely. While Elon Musk’s Starlink has popularized satellite internet, this kind of system doesn’t offer a replacement for underwater cables. When it comes to Egypt and the Red Sea, there are limited options, and more cables are often the answer. (In some areas, such as Tonga, where there is only one cable, cuts can have devastating impacts.) The need for redundancy is why Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have been spending hundreds of millions on their own subsea internet cables in recent years. If one cable fails, traffic is eventually rerouted through others. Companies that send data through subsea internet cables don’t just use one cable and will have space on multiple cables. It isn’t easy to take down large parts of the internet. “The Malacca Strait is also a problem area, but I don't think it's as bad as Egypt,” SAEx’s Thomas says.ĭespite the dangers, the internet is built on resilience. The UK, Singapore, and France are all key internet connection points, with the Strait of Malacca, near Singapore, being another chokepoint. The region isn’t the only cable choke point around the world. Other nearby cables also faced outages in the same year. In 2013, the Egyptian navy arrested three people who were allegedly cutting internet cables in the region. “The Red Sea is a fairly shallow body of water, and there's been historically a lot of cable cuts there as a result,” Madory says. In March this year, another cable avoiding Egypt was severed as a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.ĭisruption also happens around the Red Sea itself. The JADI cable system that bypassed Egypt was shut down due to Syria’s civil war, Madory says, and it has not been reactivated. ![]() “Every time someone tries to draw up an alternative route, you end up going through Syria or Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan-all these places have a lot of issues,” Madory says. To the south, cables that pass around Africa are longer while to the north, only one cable (the Polar Express) travels above Russia. Going through Egypt is one of the only practical routes available. While some intercontinental internet cables travel across land, it is generally safer for them to be placed at the bottom of the sea where it is harder for them to be disrupted or snooped upon. Passing through the Red Sea and across Egypt is the shortest (mostly) underwater route between Asia and Europe. Primarily, its geography contributes to the concentration of cables in the area. Subsea cables connect New York to London and Australia to Los Angeles.Įgypt has become one of the internet’s most prominent chokepoints for a few reasons, says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik. The global network of underwater cables forms a large part of the internet’s backbone, carrying the majority of data around the world and eventually linking up to the networks that power cell towers and Wi-Fi connections. While connectivity was restored in a few hours, the disruption highlights the fragility of the world’s 550-plus subsea internet cables, plus the outsized role Egypt and the nearby Red Sea have in the internet’s infrastructure. “The worst was Ethiopia, that lost 90 percent of its connectivity, and Somalia thereafter also 85 percent.” Cloud services belonging to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft were all also disrupted, subsequent analysis revealed. “It affected about seven countries and a number of over-the-top services,” says Rosalind Thomas, the managing director of SAEx International Management, which plans to create a new undersea cable connecting Africa, Asia, and the US. One other cable was also damaged in the incident, with the cause of the damage unknown. The cable, also known as AAE-1, was severed where it briefly passes across land through Egypt. ![]() When the cable was cut on June 7, millions of people were plunged offline and faced temporary internet blackouts. As it snakes through the South China Sea and toward Europe, the cable helps provide internet connections to more than a dozen countries, from India to Greece. The Asia-Africa-Europe-1 internet cable travels 15,500 miles along the seafloor, connecting Hong Kong to Marseille, France.
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