Network Disruption in Eu & Middle East

This morning when I woke up I was greeted by this news:

Severed cable disrupts web access

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.
It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.
A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.
Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

[Link]

I was quite worried that my net would be disrupted as well, but luckily so far so good, I can surf most of the websites just like usual.

In case you didn't realised, Internet is connected via optical fibre cables which lies under the ocean, connecting every continent together. You thought Internet is connected wirelessly eh?

Optical fibre/fiber bursting with colours.


The severed cables are located near Egypt and the Mediterranean, which is a strategic location connecting Europe, Middle East & Asia. So far only 1 out of 4 cables are working, so the network can still be connected, though at a very slow rate.

2 years ago an earthquake hits Taiwan, which somehow affected the cable, causing telecommunication breakdown over here as the cable near Taiwan serve as the gateway to the US network (which host the majority of websites). Can't really remember how bad the laggy net is, but it's fixed after a few weeks time.

From the previous example, we can speculate that the possible cause of this time's disruption is due to quakes, though not a major one, but it is enough to do damage on the cables.