Anchor found at cable cut site

Flag Telecom, the owner of two of the recently cut cables in the Middle East, says it has found an abandoned anchor near the site of one of the cuts.

Cut # 2: FALCON Cable cut between Dubai (UAE) and Al SEEB (Oman) - The FALCON Cable cut between Dubai (UAE) and Al SEEB (Oman) is due to a ship anchor, an abandoned anchor (weighing 5-6 tonnes) was found.

As most submarine cable experts suspected. Which may put to rest some of the more outrageous hysteria about the "four cuts in one week" paranoia.

I talked to Stephan Beckert of TeleGeography this morning, who had a few comments:

"People should put their tinfoil helmets on. Cable cuts are a part of life.

He said the first two cuts were serious and clearly impacted traffic. The other two -- Flag's Falcon cable and Quatar-UAE cable -- would never have been reported but for cables being in the news. The Falcon cable is actually part of a self-sealing ring, he added, "so the only ones who would have been hurt were people who didn't pay for "protected communications."

The conspiracy theories just don't make sense, Beckert said. "If you're a terrorist you're going from killing people to inconveniencing them. I'm all in favor of that kind of terrorism. If you're the U.S. military, you're also a heavy user of these cables, so that doesn't make sense."

He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to ships' anchors. "They don't even track terrorism," he said. "Cable cuts are a routine part of the business."