Egypt: web outage wasn't caused by a ship

The plot thickens in the biggest net outage ever recorded. It was not a ship recklessly dragging an anchor along the sea floor that snapped a vital underwater data cable off the coast of Egypt last week, triggering a net outage that spanned across the Middle East as far as India, Egypt's Communication Ministry cryptically reported over the weekend.

What was it then? Alas, the good people at the ministry are not saying. For now, the focus of the investigation appears to be on ruling out earlier press reports that a wayward ship was to blame. And a clever bit of sleuthing has been employed to back up their assertions.

According to an AFP report, the Ministry says it has reviewed a full 24 hours (12 hours before and 12 hours after the outage) of video footage of the shipping zone in question. "And no ships sailed [through] the area" during that period, the Ministry said in a statement. Plus, the maps are clearly marked -- this is a no-go zone for ships.

Sounds like the logic employed by ISPs everywhere in explaining why your net connection has malfunctioned.

The Ministry's explanation, of course, is little consolation to the millions of affected web surfers. A repair ship is heading out to the area on Tuesday, the Ministry assures us.