The breakage of the three trunk undersea cables in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia has dropped Internet bandwidth between Europe and Asia to 10% of normal capacity, as Telco’s and ISPs frantically try to reroute connections through the USA. Users in SE Asia are reporting connections as slow as 5 bps with up to 100% transmission packet loss on some browse and email connection attempts.

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted on Friday (19th Dec 2008) after three undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean, France Telecom said. “The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear,” a statement said, while a spokesman said it was unlikely to have been an attack.

The company said it was sending a ship to fix the lines but that it would not arrive until Monday and that it could take until December 31 until normal service was restored.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand – 16 June 2004 - Rainy season’s arrived. You get a hint at this from the amount of wet stuff in the air outside and a personal malaise about going anywhere.

In some ways it’s a bit like the onset of deep winter back in Europe – when the sun shines you dash around trying to clear all the outside jobs before the clouds roll in again, and once they’ve arrived, you try to find things to do in the house. So, apart from vegetating in front of the TV, or rewashing your favourite T-shirt, how do you fill your time? Do you ever consider that housebound time, and your expensive Internet connection could actually be earning you money?