Internet in Lebanon Back After Cable Ruptures, Knocks Nation Offline

Internet service in Lebanon is slowly and partially returning on Friday after damage to an underwater cable knocked the entire nation offline several times this week.

The cable, which lies about 30 miles off the Egyptian coast, broke on Wednesday. The cable is part of the India-Middle East-Western Europe system, an 8,100-foot-long fibre-optic link between eight countries in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

The system went live in 2009, but Lebanon didn’t join the network until the summer of 2011.

During the breaks between outages, Lebanon’s telecommunications minister Nicolas Sehnaoui was periodically updating Lebanese citizens on the government’s progress in restoring the nation’s Internet access.

Live from Cyprus: Changes have just been applied few minutes ago. This will increase the speed back to normal all over Lebanon

— Nicolas Sehnaoui (@NicolaSehnaoui) July 6, 2012

On Friday, the nearby nation of Cyprus agreed to re-route some of Lebanon’s web traffic in and out of the country, while Lebanon’s state-run telecom provider said it would start routing traffic through a series of reserve cables, according to local news outlet The Daily Star.

Those steps were taken with the hope of returning the country’s Internet to full speed, but reports from Lebanon’s capital of Beirut indicate that Internet users there were still experiencing slow or completely unavailable Internet connections.

Not in #Lebanon RT @mashable: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations on.mash.to/PkgkrB

— Abdelrahman M.Chehab (@AbdelrahmanCh) July 6, 2012

“slow is probably the best word to describe Lebanon’s Internet.” dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-New…

— Stephen Dockery (@S_Dockery) July 6, 2012

SEE ALSO: History of the Internet in a Nutshell [INFOGRAPHIC]

In October of last year, a BBC report found that Lebanon had one of the slowest Internet connections in the world.

What would you do if your entire country was knocked offline? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CGinspiration

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