Severed fibre optic cables disrupted internet access in parts of eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey on Thursday, 19th December 2019. This caused a blackout of google services.
The issue, lasting for about two hours, was the result of multiple fibre cables being physically cut at the same time. This clearly unusual event, disrupted internet access in parts of eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey on Thursday.
Google said its services were among those unavailable in the regions for about 30 minutes. It was telling internet service providers to connect to its other servers to “route around the problem”.
The company blamed “multiple simultaneous fibre cuts”, in a statement saying they are very rare.
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BBC confirms that internet access in Bulgaria, Iran and Turkey had been disrupted for about two hours on Thursday morning.
Sadjad Bonabi, a director at Iran’s Communications Infrastructure Company, said two cuts happened at once, one between Iran and Bucharest and the other on a line to Munich.
Google Has Restored Its Services
The search engine giant has not provided any explanation for the incident. Google told the BBC it would publish a full incident report in the coming weeks.
In the past, people have mistakenly cut international internet cables. A 75-year-old woman admitted damaging fibre-optic cables linking Georgia to Armenia while scavenging for copper in 2011.
In 2018, a construction crew also accidentally cut a fibre link in Orkney while building of a new hospital.
Google told internet service providers to connect to its other servers to “route around the problem” during the incident.
The company’s services, however, was restored in the affected areas as the entire incident lasted just about 2 hours. In case you experienced some issues with Google on Thursday, this was the cause.
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