MIDDLE EAST: Stop that download!
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Two cables beneath the Mediterranean Sea have been damaged, which may seem quaint and old world, but the result is a major slow-down in Egyptian cyberspace. Connecting to the Internet may take minutes, surfing is a disaster. Bloggers, judging by the scenes at cyber-cafes, are restless balls of nerves, sipping espressos, their fingers still, forlorn. With limited accessibility, the Egyptian government has asked Internet users to stop downloading songs and movies, to make connectivity better for businesses.
‘Two of our cables are affected; everyone will go onto a third cable,’ Mohammed Taymur, Egypt’s Telecommunications Ministry spokesman, told AFP. ‘But that will not be enough bandwidth. The cable will be overloaded and no one will be able to get access. . . People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect business who have more important things to do.’
The guy downloading the most recent episode of Lost, or those unmentionable films that are short on dialogue but big on, shall we say, passion, may not find Taymur’s argument convincing. They may find it LOL. But it’s slow going, either way. The damaged cables are also affecting service across the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Repairs may take days. It took seven minutes to open up the page to write this post. How long it will take to actually file it, no one knows, but (my apologies to big business) here goes. . . .click
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
