Thursday 31 January 2008

At Least Two?

I spotted this article about disruption to the internet caused by breakages to two undersea cables between Alexandria and Palermo, possibly caused by a ship's anchor.

Now far be it from me to blame our slow internet connection over the last while or so on anything other than this but I was bemused by this sentence:

In Dubai, at least two internet service providers (ISPs) were affected.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this imply that there are more than two ISP's? So, go on then, I give up. I've got Du and Etisalat (who some would probably argue are one and the same thing) - but who else is there and are they better than our beloved government mon sorry duopoly? More to the point, I don't ever remember being invited to subcribe to them!

5 comments:

Grumpy Goat said...

Reprted by the BBC, who should have said '...both ISPs...'

This is the same BBC that reported during the recent protests in Burma (or Myanmar if you like) that the government had shut down some of the Burmese ISPs. (Sorry, I can't find the actual link.)

But I inferred at the time that the BBC regarded a shortage of independent internet providers as a Bad Thing.

Keef said...

Have DOO rolled out their Interweb service then? AFAIK their only offering is in TECOM sites, since they took over DIC (sic) Telecom...

What's bugging me is that one smallish anchor was able to cut 2 large cables (FLAG & SE-ME-WE-ME-POO-ME 4). Is it not just a bit moronic to place these two cable so close together that they get zapped in the same incident? The whole idea of the internet was that it could survive catastrophes, military or otherwise, because the software can always find alternative routes if a particular connection goes down.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these two cable are exactly the same ones that were damaged by not one, but two sinking ships in the Indian Ocean a couple of years ago. Are they magnetic, I wonder. Do they attract large, heavy and quite possibly sharp metal objects?

Em said...

diplomatic grammar.

Jones. Bridget Jones. said...

One, two or three, for sure it made web-life difficult ha!

My sympathies about your freind's passing away Billy. Been away from the web for a while and missed the news. Good to hear Mrs DB's got her job alright. Hope she's enjoying her new ride ha! ;)

Jayne said...

Itisatwat has got us all by the short & curlies. I think the cable cutting also gave 'em chance to trawl through their Super Server to block out even more stuff!