February 04, 2008	Monday	Muharram 25, 1429

DOHA, Feb 3: An undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel said on Sunday, the latest such incident in less than a week.

The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das on Friday, Qtel’s head of communications Adel al Mutawa said.

Cables were also damaged last week in the Mediterranean and off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and south Asia.

The cause of the damage is not yet known.

Mutawa said Qtel’s loss of capacity had been kept below 40 per cent over the weekend thanks to what he said was Qatar’s large number of alternative routes for transmission.

The UAE telecommunications watchdog said disruption to Internet and telephone services in the Gulf state was likely to continue for 10 another days.

UAE telecoms provider “du” said in an statement on its website that the owners of the Mediterranean cables, FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE4, were fixing the damage.

“While no schedule is available yet for the repair, initial estimates indicate it will take two weeks to repair the FLAG cable,” the statement said.—AFP