Extensive damage to two undersea cables has thrown Internet activity across large parts of India, Asia and the Middle East, out of gear.
According to reports, a ship anchoring off Egypt's Alexandria coast cut through the Indian-owned FLAG and also the SEA-ME-WE cable on Wednesday, leading to an unprecedented disruption in international connectivity.
"The repair will take another 15-20 days," Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said. Although repair teams have rushed to the Egyptian coast to fix the problem and a 'low grade' service is likely to be activated soon.
Some service providers affected by the breakdown include FLAGTEL of ADAG Reliance and Delhi's Internet ISP Spectranet and Bangalore's ISP Karturi Network, he said.
"Majority of the firms are trying to restore their connections through the Pacific Region, which is increasing the latency period (time taken to connect two servers)," he added. Chharia said the Bombay Stock Exchange was unlikely to be impacted as it is connected through the VPN.
Indian Internet services were badly hit because the damaged cables are a channel for traffic to the United States and Europe.
Many critical operations have already been badly affected by the disruption to the Internet service, although business process outsourcing units in India say that they have not been badly affected.
However, quick move by repair teams to find alternative routes have saved the services from totally collapsing and operations at major stock exchanges in the region were not affected, although they remained painfully slow.
Meanwhile, reports said that almost 60 per cent of India's Internet users were affected, including corporations and individuals.
No estimate of the magnitude of losses have been incurred due to the breakdown in Internet links has yet been made.
Additional inputs: PTI