Cable Cuts, Accident Clusters, and the Information Age

"Internet provider in Emirates confirms undersea cable cut in Persian Gulf between Dubai, Oman, cause unknown"

This is getting interesting.

• Two cables north of Egypt got cut earlier this week, possibly by a ship's anchor. That sounds like an accident
• Now a third cable has been cut, less than a week later, in the Persian Gulf

The latest cut sounds like an accident, too. Unlikely, but an accident.

Another curious coincidence: U.K. FLAG Telecom, a British company, owns the most recently cut cable, and one of the two that went down earlier this week. Again, a coincidence. My guess is that it's about as unlikely as two out of three cable breaks in America involving, say, Qwest.

Some good news: more of India is getting back online.

Outages do happen. An earthquake near Taiwan in 2006 damaged undersea cabes, and gave East Asia almost two months of outages.

I do not think that these three cable cuttings were intentional. On the other hand, it's curious that three cables got cut

• In two probably-unrelated accidents
• Within a few day of each other
• In a troubled part of the world
• Where some people don't seem to like what's happened in the rest of the world during the last several centuries

Those cut cables seem to be disrupting the lives, and jobs, of people in the Islamic world who have made the transition to the Information Age: On a scale that Sheik Osama bin Laden tried for in the 9/11 attacks.

If a fourth, or fifth, or sixth cable gets cut in the next few days, I'll start re-evaluating my 'cluster of accidents' opinion.

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UPDATE (December 19, 2008)

Another three undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean ("Mediterranean Internet Cables Accident-Prone?" (December 19, 2008)).