

How will the cable in the Middle East affect the rest of the world? - dkokelley

I'm sure many of you know about the data cable that was damaged, resulting in a huge loss of bandwidth for the middle east, namely India.&#60;p&#62;My question for you is this: How will this effect the rest of the world? Will America see its economy suffer from the loss of outsourced tech-support? What about the entangled economies of the Middle East and the rest of the world? Could poor communication of oil companies that operate there suffer and ultimately raise oil prices? Tell me what you think.&#60;p&#62;Here is a site to get you started:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/?imw=Y&#38;iref=mpstoryemail&#60;p&#62;Other articles are already on Hacker News.
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sspencer
For readers of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon," this news will bring some
paranoid visions dancing into your head. My first thought was "I wonder if
someone cut it on purpose?" Seems unlikely, but you have to wonder why they
are so reticent about disclosing the cause.

Interesting news.

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dkokelley
Yeah I heard that some people feared that their government's cut the internet
as an act of censorship. I have a friend who lives in Egypt and as of right
now he can only effectively use IM and email. "Wikipedia takes 14 minutes to
load" because of the lower bandwidth.

