It’s been like spending a week trying to pogo in molasses – the Internet is just not terribly well. And I have to confess, after a week of pages not loading, Twitter not updating and email taking an age, I’m feeling somewhat frustrated and generally pissy.
The statement from Etisalat (back on the 20th) that its services were unaffected as it had rushed to route bandwidth through other means was piffle, as usual. Du made the same statement, but I don’t use their services so can’t comment. Etisalat’s network quality most certainly has been significantly affected by the outage, but why let the facts stop you lying to you customers and treating them like morons? It never stopped ‘em before, anyway. I’ve also had a few dodgy voice circuits, which might be a result of the telco that likes to say ‘ugh’ cutting some of its voice traffic over to IP from its beloved yoghurt pots.
To be fair, it’s not their fault that some Captain Pugwash type decided to drag SEAMEWE4 on the end of his anchor ‘till it snapped (or whatever mad series of events led to the break). But I do wish they’d just tell the truth.
SEAMEWE (anoraks will know it stands for South East Asia Middle East Western Europe) and FLAG (Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) are the two main cable systems upon which the bulk (if not all) of the UAE’s Internet traffic depends. There are four SEAMEWEs – the last time we had problems, it was a cut in SEAMEWE4, the latest most sparkly terabit capacity cable. SEAMEWE3 is also operational, but SEAMEWE1 and 2 have been phased out.
Although it is feasible to use satellite, and there are satellite circuits available, this is an expensive and limited option that most telcos will only use as a last resort – the great undersea cables are where it’s at.
There are other circuits apart from SEAMEWE 3 and 4 and FLAG, for instance (as you’ll see from the map above) there’s a circuit that goes around Africa. But the Red Sea and Suez are the most vulnerable points in the network of sub-sea cables that underpins our ability to do important stuff like play Chatroulette and listen to the Moon Song.
Until there is better diversity, we’ll continue to be highly vulnerable to breaks – and will continue to see limited bandwidth sold to us at premium prices compared to other world markets. It constantly rankles when I think that the Japanese are paying $0.27 per megabit month, with the average subscriber taking a 60 Gig line. Yes, 60Gig. In fact, much of the world gets plenty more bandwidth (with less latency) for less money than we do. A hell of a lot less money.
Hey, ho. It’s not as if Internet connectivity were critical to the development of the Middle East region and the largest single factor in its ability to be competitive moving forward, is it?
10 comments:
You've. Had. The. Same. Week. As. Me.
Alexander, as long as you are able to connect to the Guardian I'm sure you will survive, somehow...
EoD. Yah. :)
Nick. Rrrrrsp.
I always enjoy the Etisalat bashing posts
It's just the standard Dubai company response Alex - "there is no problem".
pages: normally loaded
twitter: no delays
emails: received as usual
youtube: fails few times
etisalat: did say its internet was affected
you: are bullshitting
@anonymous I disagree, haven't been able to load a single video during this whole week
The slowdown isn't evenly spread over Dubai; I'm on Cable internet and didn't suffer any slowdowns until 2 days ago whereas most people were complaining about it on twitter for quite a few days before that.
They've said on twitter that the problem is over with now and it'll be restored by this evening.
This is why internet speeds are low in the UAE, because there isn't enough internet--literally; undersea cables just cost so much to lay. The SEAMEWE4 is a 500 million US dollar cable, the cost of which is spread between a dozen or so countries.
There are more undersea cables being built at the moment.
In my opinion, the slowdowns this time around have been far less than any time previously (but then again not all connections have been affected/unaffected similarly)
I just read a press release issued by Etisalat a few minutes ago. Its so sad how they try to make things disappear. Here's my favorite part:
“Etisalat customers did not face major slowdowns in Internet browsing owing to its robust network with multiple redundant links to major global Internet hubs in Asia, Europe, and USA,”
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/587129-etisalat-says-uae-internet-service-fully-restored
FPS:
I've just moved from Etisalat to DU (new apartment and all), and will recommend.....DON'T MOVE.... My worst experience was trying to drag Outlook settings out of them so I could use email..."We don't support Outlook because it is third party software"!!!! It's less service for the same price, what a bargain.
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