Mumbai: Indian-owned cable network operator, FLAG Telecom on Friday reported that a third submarine cable “SNAP” in the Middle East has led to a "critical" telecom breakdown; it has caused global net problems by breaking two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.

According to the official website of FLAG Telecom, FALCON cable had been reported cut at 0559 GMT, 56 kms (35 miles) from Dubai on a segment between the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

According to FLAG, Wednesday's incident caused disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, said, "The situation is critical for us in terms of congestion."

However, the cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed.

Flag Telecom told that a repair ship was expected to arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5 February, with repair work expected to take a week. A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the "next few days".

Internet service providers told that they expected India's to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.

Tarek Kamil, Egypt Minister of Communications and Information Technology told that he expected business coming to normal within two days.

"However, it's not before ten days until the internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil said.

Flag Telecom told that the earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle East and India. The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January. The second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - also split.

FLAG Telecom is a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's number two mobile operator Reliance Communications. FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East. SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts disrupted the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system. The cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

Consequently, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.