Time Immortal

In the wake of that undersea cable failing (it now appears that two cables were accidentally severed!), Egypt has called on its internet-using citizens to curb the amount of time they spend online, and what content they access when browsing.

Egypt’s Internet situation is in dire straits after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean were accidentally severed yesterday, cutting off much of the country’s access to the outside world. 70 percent of the nation’s Internet has been disconnected, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, with phone calls to Europe and the US also being disrupted. As a result, the ministry has launched an emergency task force to deal with the situation and has asked the general public to avoid downloading more bandwidth-intensive items for now in order to allow businesses priority.

It’s not just Egypt, either; other countries throughout the Middle East also suffered outages, with some being completely disconnected. And both India and Egypt, which run high-volume call centers, have taken a major hit in communications because of the disruption.

“Two of our cables are affected; everyone will go onto a third cable,” ministry spokesperson Mohammed Taymur told the AFP. “But that will not be enough bandwidth. [...] People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.“

You know, in 2006, Egypt was the #3 hotspot in the world from which Google-searches for the keyword “sex” originated. One wonders if this sort of failure would be sufficient to create a noticeable dip in the revenues of the porn industry?

Probably not, unfortunately, but one can always hope.