Egypt forecasting internet problems for another 10 days

Internet and data traffic in Egypt will not be restored to normal for at least another 10 days, following last week's incident when two undersea cables were cut, causing severe disruptions.

The Egyptian telecommunications ministry said it expected work to repair the cables in the Mediterranean Sea to start on Tuesday and take several days.

The cable cuts near Egypt disrupted web access in parts of the Middle East and Asia.

"Thus, the disorder in the internet network would continue for a period that may not be less than 10 days," it said in a statement.

Egypt said about 55 per cent of its internet capacity had been restored. "This is expected to increase gradually," the statement added.

Telecommunications Minister Tarek Kamel said last week that it would take at least a week to fix the breaches, which are in segments of two intercontinental cables known as SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG.

Despite the volume of traffic that usually passes through the broken cables, the Egyptian stock market said the incident had no effect on trading, though some traders said transactions had been slower and that several international trading orders failed to go through. The central bank expressed its frustration with the service and said it would seek alternatives for the banking system if similar disruptions were to happen again.

On Friday Indian-owned cable network operator FLAG Telecom said a third undersea cable was cut between the United Arab Emirates and Oman in the Persian Gulf.

Kamel, the Egyptian minister, has ordered the state-owned Telecom Egypt to compensate all users with a month's subscription free of charge. Egypt has also said it wants compensation from the undersea cable operators.

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