Qatar Telecom plans to increase internet capacity by 30% by January 2009, to increase the safety margin and to ensure that it has sufficient redundant capacity to meet growing demand and any untoward situation, such as the one caused by the breach in submarine cables in the Mediterranean sea.
Qatar Telecom has reported that its traffic for internet and voice was not significantly impacted because of breach of internet sub-cables in the Mediterranean Sea on December 19, 2008. The internet capacity affected was estimated at 47%, with 53% still available. With Qtel’s built-in safety margin of 20% for its network redundancy (spare capacity), the traffic impact overall was less than 27%.
Due to the disruption caused by the breach, which is now known to have affected three out of four sub-cables, customers experienced some immediate slow-down in internet performance. Qtel said that it is in regular contact with the team responsible for the France Telecom cable ship charged with repairing the breach and is optimistic that the first cable can be repaired.
In the interim, Qtel is diverting all internet traffic East, through alternative routes. The company is also rate-shaping streaming applications, in order to ensure optimized browsing capacity on the internet.
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