By Submarine Cable NewsFeed

Batelco has announced that, in view of the

recent undersea cable damage that caused inconvenience for Internet users from Egypt, across the Middle East to India, and its customers in Bahrain, it will credit

their customers' Internet accounts with 50% of their monthly rental broadband charge. For example a customer on a BD10 per month package will receive BD5

credit.

“Even though no Batelco customer lost their Internet access throughout this period, we are aware that they experienced slow downloads due to

congestion. Our engineers started to re-route traffic within minutes of the cable cuts and our investments in network diversity served us well to restore

significant connectivity on remaining operational cables and satellites,” said Batelco Chief Executive Peter Kaliaropoulos.

The cable cuts lasted just over

12 days. Within a few days 65% of capacity was restored for Batelco's customers. Batelco's investments in three cable systems, satellite services and engineering

planning provided ample redundancy and diversity and no customer lost complete internet connectivity throughout the 12 days, the company said in a

statement.

“Should a new cable system be introduced in the Middle East, Batelco will explore investing in it. However, Batelco has ‘best in class'

superior and a more diverse infrastructure than any other operator in the Kingdom which serves as a robust and efficient national backbone to access the world-wide

web,” Mr. Kaliaropoulos said.