On June 7, 2022, Internet users across multiple countries in Asia and Africa witnessed disruptions in Internet connectivity, due to two marine cable cuts in the Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1) and Southeast Asia—Middle East—Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE-5) telecommunications cable systems near Egypt.
Both cables are important submarine networks which connect regions by carrying communication signals over the oceans.
AAE-1 is a 25,000km submarine cable from Southeast Asia to Europe across Egypt, connecting Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.
SEA-ME-WE-5 is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system which is 20 000km long, that carries telecommunications between Singapore and France.
Uneven Disruptions in Internet Connectivity
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. (PTCL) first commissioned the building of AAE-1 in 2017, through collaborations with leading telecom operators around the globe, to diversify available submarine networks and hedge against disruptions.
Noman Ahmed Said, the CEO of information services firm SI Global Solutions, noted that the loss of Internet bandwidth was a “major issue that must be curbed immediately”, adding that “it is necessary to have backup systems in place as issues like these frequently arise” for submarine cables.
However, the network disruption did not affect all countries evenly. Notably, Cloudflare head of data insight David Belson observed in an interview with The Record that some countries were better at rerouting web traffic to adjust to disruptions from the AAE-1 cable.
“For example, Ethiopia saw an immediate traffic drop of 90%, whereas Pakistan saw an immediate traffic drop of only 25%.”
Regardless, the disruption from the AAE-1 cable cut lasted around four hours, causing significant disruptions to people who were working or studying from home.
Furthermore, the cable cut was repaired relatively quickly because the damage had occurred on land, in Egypt: if the break had occurred at sea, it could have taken days to repair.
Network Diversity Key to Managing Cable Cuts
Globally, around 380 undersea cables support the functioning of the Internet, but these cables are still vulnerable to major breakdowns as a result of damage from ship anchors, collapsing undersea rock formations, and tectonic activity.
Although brief cable disruptions are a fairly frequent occurrence, one previous outbreak of undersea cable cuts had taken place in 2008. From January to February 2008, three separate incidents of severe damage to submarine optical communication cables caused major Internet disruptions, affecting millions of users around the world.
Ultimately, network diversity remains the key to managing and mitigating the effects of cable disruptions in today’s world. However, the building of new undersea cables remains a complex undertaking, which is made even more complicated by the consortium ownership model for undersea cables, and complications over state jurisdiction and regulation which may hinder new projects for cable development.