World Economies hang by an Internet thread

By now, any news junkie is probably aware there was a mysterious set of events that all but brought Internet access in some countries to a halt. You can breathe a sigh of relief if you live in North America, Australia, UK, Israel, Iraq and most English speaking countries you are untouched. The brunt of the virtual shutdown slowed Internet access in large areas of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India. Many of these countries were able to redirect their Internet traffic through alternative routes.

Although one country is publicly announcing they are having no problems and “everything is fine”, 3rd party reports show quite a different story. The Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi told ArabianBusiness.com that “everything is fine”, but Internet connectivity reports on the web, citing a router in Tehran, appear to indicate that there is currently no connection to the outside world. You can view the 3rd party Internet traffic report here for Iran, Asia and the world.

While conspiracy theories are spinning around the Internet that this is a planned strike by Israel and the US to break Iran off from the world, we’re not looking to get into that mess. What is very interesting to take a close look at is how closely our world is tied to the Internet for our business and personal lives. Financial transactions from bank transfers to stock trades are transmitted through these intercontinental cables connecting our countries.

Most of the countries effected by the most recent Internet blackout were only effected for around a 24 hour period. Smart engineers were able to reroute Internet traffic to other parts of the countries and the only result was heavy traffic on certain intercontinental cables. This produced slow access for most, putting countries like India at 60% of capacity. In particular, Delhi which is the second largest city in India with 11.5 million people has had an almost complete shutdown. While the reports state the city is at 50% capacity, users at Internet cafes are telling others they’re having no luck getting access. ”We are unable to access any website. Customers are disappointed by this. The Internet is really very slow,” said Sahil, a Net user in Delhi.

At this point in time only four intercontinental cables were cut within a few days period of time. Reports were first released that it was likely ships anchors had cut the cables. On February 3rd, 2008 Egypt’s Ministry of Communications said no ships were present when the two cables were present. “A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time,” said the statement. More information the Ministry’s report can be found here. If these cables were not cut by ship’s anchors then it’s easy to conclude that someone cut the cables with intent.

With a small number of four cables being cut, it was easy for the world’s telecommunications engineers to reroute Internet traffic and recover some access, albeit Iran’s reported consistent blackout. With the world’s business communications and transactions becoming almost dependent on these cables, we need to find alternative solutions to grow the ability to reroute our data whether it be through more redundant Internet sea cables or by satellite. If a clandestine operation were to target these cables in great numbers it could bring the entire world economy to a standstill for weeks. Financial kickbacks could be established easily by shorting the markets and knowing certain sectors would take quite a hit. Hopefully our government is hard at work preparing for a possible attack on our communications that lie outside of our country. Since we all participate in a worldwide economy which has been more apparent with the recent sub-prime crisis, it’s of a serious consequence that we protect others access to the Internet as much as ours. How long will we let the world’s economies hang by an Internet thread?

We want to know what you think about the Internet blackout. Do you think this was planned or just a coincidence that 4 major intercontinental cables were cut within days of each other? Talk back with us through comments or at or form if you want to be on the radio show.