Analysis of recent incidents of submarine cable damage by Jon Gordon:

The blogosphere is awash with conspiracy theorists who see the recent damage to four Internet cables in the Mideast as an act of terrorism or war …. I just got off the phone with Eric Schoonover of TeleGeography, a research firm that’s closely following the story. His message: Relax people. These things happen ….

SCHOONOVER: We are confident that multiple submarine cables have been damaged in and around the Middle East in the last week now, specifically SeaWeMe-4 and Flag Europe Asia were damaged on January 30th; Falcon, which is an intra-Middle East cable that also connects to India was damaged the following day or the day after, depending on where you are in the time zone; And a fourth cable, Qatar UAE, was damaged a few days after that. The Qatar UAE cable, the rumor is the damage was in the power system rather than an underwater fault whereas the other cables seem to be cable faults, underwater. That is pretty much what we’ve been able to confirm. the cause of the faults, however, is still up for grabs.

The one thing to keep in mind is that these type of things do happen with some regularity. It’s just that you don’t hear about it in the news because typically it doesn’t take down as much capacity between regions as the original fault on January 30th did.

- Jon Gordon @ Minnesota Public Radio: Link.