Whilst we all believe that satellites floating around the earth are responsible for the TV and the fact that we can watch the Superbowl in America all the way over the Atlantic in the UK the same cannot be said for the Internet. The Internet is run by an enormous network of copper and Fibre-Optic cables and in order for everyone to be able to connect to the Internet then there is some form of cabling infrastructure in place.

Many of these cables are submarine, in that they run under the water, they are well reinforced with up to nine layers of components to make sure these vital cables don't get disturbed. The problem is the cables running under the Mediterranean have recently become severed, initially one cable joining Egypt and Italy was broken but now a further two have been severed causing global problems, with Broadband Internet service disrupted in some Middle East countries such as Iran, India and Egypt.

The bigger concern was the disruption caused to telecommunications in these countries, especially India which as many people will know is home to thousands of outsourced call centres, BT was quick to re-route their network to deal with this disruption and reports say that although the telephone network quality isn't as clear as normal it is still workable.

The problem is that smaller companies with less comprehensive contingency plans are suffering; Vikas Jain, assistant vice president at AEZ Group, a real estate developer said, "We have a lot of offices connected by the net so because the internet is down means we are cut off from the head office,"

This problem is not the first of its kind, Broadband and other telecommunications in Taiwan were disrupted for months in 2006 after an earthquake managed to destroy 7 of 8 cables connecting to Mainland Asia. The repairs which were expected to last 10 days stretched out to months in order to get back up to speed. With the recent incident repair ships have been dispatched to repair cables before the situation worsens.

The reason for this disruption? Apparently the best guess is that a tanker had dragged its anchor along the sea bed. The repair time is likely to be a week from when the repair ships arrive, whilst the Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Egypt said the Broadband services in Egypt would be back up at 80% within 48 hours of the initial breakdown. Hopefully the World Wide Web will be back to strength soon!

If you are looking for cheap broadband whether you have an existing provider or not then you can compare broadband deals online. Also if you are thinking about changing your supplier then check your connection using one of the various broadband speed test websites to see whether you are getting your money's worth.

¶ 12:24 AM