Internet access was disrupted in many areas of Eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey on Thursday. The issue lasted for more than 2 hours and was caused due to several fibre optic cables being cut at the same time which is a very unusual thing to happen.
In a statement, Google told that its services were not available in the regions for around 30 minutes. It told the internet service providers to connect to its other servers to avoid the problem. The company had given the blame on multiple power cuts simultaneously due to disruption in its services.
In Bulgaria, Iran and Turkey the internet services were cut for about two hours due to the same issue.
Sajjad Bonabi who works as a director in Iran’s Communications Infrastructure Company said two power cuts occurred simultaneously on two different lines one on a line that connects the Asian country to the Romanian capital of Bucharest and other on the line that heads towards the German capital Munich.
He also said that the traffic over the network was rerouted to the other lines and that the connections in the Western and Southern Iran were much better. So far no explanation has been given for cutting the fibre optic cables.
Google only said that it would look into the matter and conduct a thorough investigation before releasing any comments or publishing any reports.
This is not the first time that the international fibre optic cables had been cut as this incident had already happened in the past.
Eight years back in 2011, a female who was then 75 years old admitted publicly that she had mistakenly cut the cables while scavenging for copper. The lines were connecting Georgia to Armenia. Also, last year in Orkney a fibre cable was accidentally cut during the construction activities of a new hospital.