ALKHOBAR, 27 May 2003 — Last weekend, Internet users in the Kingdom experienced severe problems accessing online mail accounts and browsing. According to Dr. Eyas S. Al-Hajery, director-general, Internet Services Unit, King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, the earthquake which struck Algeria resulted in the severance of multiple international marine telecommunication cables linking the Middle East, some southern European countries and North Africa to the global Internet. This severely impacted Internet service in all these regions.
As for Saudi Arabia, at roughly 1 a.m. Thursday morning, four of the five STM-1 international links provided by Saudi Telecom Company (STC) to the Internet Services Unit (ISU) at KACST were severed due to the earthquake. This lead to the Kingdom’s entire Internet traffic being carried by a single overloaded international link to Japan. The unavoidable outcome of this was slow browsing for all of Saudi Arabia’s Internet users due to the congestion of this single line.
STC, which is contractually responsible for providing these international lines and maintaining them in joint coordination with a number of international carriers, began searching for ways to restore service to the downed lines. By Friday night, slightly before midnight, STC was finally able to bring two of the four damaged lines back online.
The addition of these two repaired lines to the existing line to Japan resulted in full service being restored. However there is no redundant capacity.
“This is considered a temporary solution as it deprives the ISU of the redundant capacity it needs to provide stable service,” said Al-Hajery. “STC assures us that they are working diligently to restore the redundant capacity very soon.”