DELHI/MUMBAI: Be prepared for slow internet speeds from Monday. Three major undersea cables - SeaMeWe 4, SeaMeWe 3 and Reliance Communications’ FLAG

Europe Asia cable - that carry a bulk of the internet traffic between Asia and the rest of the world - have been cut in the Mediterranean region between Egypt and Italy due to seismic activity. Tata Communications (earlier VSNL) is part of the consortium for SMW3 as well as SMW4 while Bharti Airtel is a member of SMW4.

Indians making ISD calls may find these calls taking longer to connect and more instances of call drops. Some internet service providers (ISPs) in India claimed that internet speeds had dipped on Saturday on account of congestion as traffic was being re-routed through alternative routes, including the Pacific.

“Internet speeds are down, but the impact doesn’t reflect the reality as the IT-BPO firms have minimum internet usage on a Saturday. The impact may be felt from Monday onwards,” ISP Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said. Overall, around 80% of the Internet voice and data traffic between India and other countries of Asia, Europe and the MiddleEast has been affected.

FLAG and SMW4 were also cut in January this year in the Mediterranean region. This time the cut is near Palermo in Italy, affecting the overall traffic between India and Europe. The three cables are not expected to be functional for the next few days. Undersea cables are prone to disruption due to natural causes like seismic activity and may also be caused by shipanchors.

In the past, sabotage has also been suspected in such cases. In a statement, a Tata Comm spokesperson said, “Three of the submarine cable systems connecting Asia and Europe have experienced cuts in the Mediterranean due to seismic activity in the region. While the cable consortiums have already initiated repair activities, Tata Comm is leveraging its diverse, global network to restore customer traffic on alternate routes.”

Bharti Airtel also said it was working with the cable consortium for restoration of services. “The voice traffic has been completely normalised. Airtel is taking all necessary steps to ensure that data services are available to its customers by routing traffic on alternative routes like its i2i undersea cable,” it said in a statement.

RCOM said traffic disruption has been reported on the segment between Alexandria (Egypt) and Palermo (Italy) and it was working with both the cable landing stations to locate the fault. It has re-routed IP traffic from Mumbai to London via Hong Kong and this may lead to congestion and increased latency on this route. France Telecom said it expects SeaMeWe 4 to be fully functional by December 25, while the rest would be operational by December 31.