A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. India suffered serious disruptions to its services and one Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage. “There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India,” Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been “largely restored” by diverting to another cable. India lost more than half of its capacity.

“There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth,” Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India, said. He told a TV news channel that a “degraded” service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India’s many outsourcing businesses, had been affected. Egypt’s Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 per cent of the country’s Internet network. The ministry said it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal.