From our data,
we can pinpoint the time of the cut at 07:19 UTC on February 17, 2012.
Following the incident, we saw International providers dependent on SMW3 start to disappear from some Middle Eastern markets,
including
Turk Telekom (AS 9121) and
Cogent (AS 174) from Oman.
On March 18, SMW3 was reactivated and these providers into this market came back to life.
With respect to reaching Oman, the impact of the outage on Internet latencies (e.g., how slow the Internet felt to end users) depended on the physical paths and providers involved.
For example, latencies to
OmanTel via Amsterdam and the
AMSIX facility or via Istanbul soared, as shown below.
From many other locations, we saw a seamless fail over to alternative providers and no real change in latencies, as shown in the following graphs where Cogent (AS 174) disappears.
Regardless of the impact, we can assume that the recent rash of cable breaks will only put wind in the sails of those working to activate terrestrial connectivity (
RCN,
JADI, and
EPEG) to the Middle East as an alternative to submarine cables.
Alternative routes to Egypt are urgently needed. The problem with EPEG is nobody knows how long C&W will be able to support this route given the sanctions against Iran. A fourth route is currently being developed from Kuwait to Turkey and beyond transiting Iraq. Iraq needs to start selling dark fiber in order for this route to become financially viable.