Egypt's Internet To Be Normal On Monday

February 9, 2008 7:50 a.m. EST

Cairo, Egypt (AHN) - Egypt's government has said that the cables disrupting Egyptian Internet capabilities will be fixed by Monday. In a statement, Telecom Egypt said that one of the cables had been completely repaired and the second cable would be fixed by Monday.

The two cables had been severed, restricting Internet usage in the North African country since late January. The official at Egypt's state-controlled telecom firm said in remarks carried on the official MENA news agency that repairs would allow Egypt to return to normalcy by Monday.

The cables disrupted Internet service across the Middle East and Asia, with Egypt losing almost 100 percent of its capacity immediately following the break.

Egyptians have had mixed feelings over the lack of Internet, with the majority of the complaints coming from companies that run on servers. Without full Internet capacity, servers have been largely down.

"We need to get to the point where when something like this occurs we can jump up and continue our lives," Sherif Ahmed, an Arabic professor in Cairo, told AHN Media Corporation. "It just doesn't make sense that so many businesses and companies are unable to work because the Internet is down."