ALKHOBAR, 5 February 2008 — When the Internet went down in Saudi Arabia last Wednesday, due to two undersea cables cut near Alexandria, Egypt, it was big news. Now, it’s a big excuse. Banking services not working? Blame it on those cables. E-mail didn’t arrive? It must be those cables. Government forms couldn’t be processed? Those pesky cables are sure causing a lot of misery!
The fact though is that the disruption caused by the cut cables can only be linked to certain clearly defined communications issues.
Interestingly however, those cables are being cited as the reason for everything that’s going wrong in information and communications technology systems this week in Saudi Arabia and that’s just ridiculous.
“If the ATM won’t give you any cash — it’s not a problem caused by the cut cables,” said Mohammad W. Bazaraa, Technical & Operations Manager, IT Department, Nesma Internet. “If you aren’t able to send mail from your company’s server — that’s not a problem caused by the cables. If you’re having trouble making a stock trade in the US, then yes, maybe that’s a problem caused by the cables.”
Bazaraa emphasized that if you’re trying to use an ICT system or ICT equipment within Saudi Arabia and it’s not working, then something else is wrong besides the cut undersea cables. In other words it’s time to call in tech support because no repair ship off the Egyptian coast is going to fix it. Anything related to international voice or data traffic could be affected by the cable disruption, although the situation has improved dramatically since the weekend.
According to Bazaraa, efforts have been made by Saudi Telecom (STC) and Integrated Telecom (ITC) to connect traffic usually carried by the cut undersea cables SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG, onto SEA-ME-WE 3. Now, international Saudi voice and data communications are being routed through the Far East instead of through Europe.
“People won’t notice much of an issue in simple browsing,” advised Bazaraa, “but if they are trying to use more sensitive applications that rely on video streaming or voice, then those services will feel different than previously due to the latency issue. The delay is just a fraction of a second but sensitive applications don’t work at their best under such conditions. There also may be bottlenecks in the Far East at certain times of the day. Unfortunately, the Middle East hadn’t been concentrating on enhancing connectivity with the Far East and this is something that needs to be reexamined in light of the current situation.”
Another issue that needs to be reconsidered is limitation on peer-to-peer applications in a crisis. Previously, when King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) controlled the Saudi Internet, there was a policy that allowed the shutdown of peer-to-peer applications when bandwidth was in short supply. With the new regulator such a policy is no longer in place and the use of peer-to-peer applications by home subscribers is eating bandwidth that isn’t readily available at the moment.
“Nesma is one of the largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Kingdom. We thought it would be better in maintaining the critical requirements of Internet usage if peer-to-peer applications employed mostly for recreation by individuals were temporarily blocked at a national level until the international network could be repaired. That didn’t happen,” Bazaraa explained. “Nesma was told that as an ISP we could choose to block our own subscribers from using these applications, but that there would be no national blocking of peer-to-peer.”
Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are used by consumers to download large files, such as movies and music. Home users tend to turn on P2P applications and just let them run for as long as it takes to download the desired files — the more bandwidth available for the download, the better. If one Saudi ISP blocks the use of P2P, the bandwidth will still be eaten up by subscribers at other Saudi ISPs downloading files through P2P applications. This is why Bazaraa believes that there should be regulations in place that order the blocking of P2P services at a national level during times when bandwidth is seriously restricted due to a network emergency.
Such a policy probably wouldn’t be met with delight by Saudi Internet subscribers. They are extremely unhappy with the sudden worsening of already limited service — especially since they will receive no compensation although their connectivity will most likely be compromised for weeks. This is another area where the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), the Kingdom’s industry regulator, needs to step up protection of the subscriber’s rights at all levels.
In closing, Bazaraa pointed out that the cable outage was really a wake up call for the Kingdom in terms of how it manages international connectivity.
“We’ve all seen how difficult it has been for those companies who are using outsourcing or who have their call centers located in Egypt or India,” Bazaraa said. “As the Kingdom’s businesses move toward such arrangements, it’s essential to have more redundancy in the communications system and companies need well considered back up strategies. Myself, I find it hard to believe that two cables could be cut by one ship’s anchor. Word is that the repair ship will arrive at the site of the problem by today and then we’ll discover exactly what has happened.”
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