The WSJ reports on the weird doings under the sea, where four nearly simultaneous cable cuts caused massive disruption to internet communications:

four cable outages in the Middle East — two off the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and two in the Persian Gulf — recently disrupted Internet connections across the region and as far away as India. The cuts throttled Egypt’s connections outside the country by 70%, hampering international banks and curtailing trading on the country’s stock exchange. India, whose huge outsourcing industry depends on the Internet, lost half its capacity.

The kinks threw into stark relief the importance of these elaborate cable connections — and their vulnerability. The likely result: Even more fiber building, as increasingly Internet-dependent companies and nations in the region seek reliable connections.

Long-haul fiber is the conduit of globalization. Even in a “wireless” era, it is this physical labyrinth of cables that now carries the bulk of Internet, wireless and fixed-line traffic. Fiber has eclipsed satellite technology as the main means of long-distance communication — enabling interaction between the world’s businesses, governments and economies.

The recent cable outages “prove the point that we should provide even more diversity through additional cables so that the world economy can withstand major disasters like this,” says Amr Badawi, Egypt’s telecom regulator.

(1) Best acronyms so far: “the FLAG Europe-Asia cable, owned by FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, and another cable lying next to it, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable, owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.” (2) Best conspiracy rumor to date, via Wired: “Has anyone considered that it would make sense to cut the cables in two places and put a listening device in then let the carrier fix the other break.”

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