Happy New Year to KICTANET We need at least 5 undersea fiber optic cables connecting us (on different routes) to the rest of the world. Trust that our government requires cable companies to involve and educate Kenyan telecom engineers in the installation and repair of any cable Kenya.go.ke owns a part of. http://telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/print.asp?ID=AR_4670 *Undersea cable cut disrupts Mideast and India communications (Summarized)* by Kendrick Struthers-Watson Mon. December 22, 2008 A French cable ship, the CS Raymond Croze, has begun repairing two badly damaged cables in the Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, Dec. 19, disrupting Internet and telephone communications. Sources indicate the cables were cut within five minutes of each other, possibly by a trawler net. A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be reconnected. This is not the first time there's been trouble along these cable routes. Last January, two of the three cables connecting Europe with Asia via the Middle East were cut. What is more pressing about the current situation is that all three cables were affected. Until these cables are fixed, service providers in the Middle East and South Asia must route their European traffic through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Despite the problems these cable cuts have caused, Alan Mauldin, Research Director for Telegeography, believes that new cable construction should help prevent future outages. "Many new cable systems are slated to enter service between Europe and Egypt in the next few years, including Telecom Egypt's TE North cable, Orascom's MENA system, FLAG's HAWK cable, the IMEWE consortium cable, and the EIG consortium cable," he said. Mauldin added that while constructing multiple cables does not guarantee against outages, the introduction of these new systems will provide additional routing options and improve resiliency.