By Jamal Adel.
Tripoli, 24 May 2014:
Repairs have been completed on fibre optics cables which were cut by accident during construction work . . .[restrict]in the Jebel Akhdar in the east of the country.
Deputy Communications Minister Mohammed Belrassali told the Libya Herald that repair work finished yesterday on the cable, on the Beida branch of the national telecoms network, along the Beida-Marj road.
Underground communication links have been subject to a number of breakages and cuts across the country recently, as a result of unplanned construction work.
Belrassali explained that a 30-percent increase in use on the network would cause slowness and frequent disruptions for some time.
He added that officials were having problems repairing the marine cable in Derna because of security problems.
He said the cable, which runs under the sea from the eastern town to Chania in Crete, had been cut twice and had not been reconnected because of the safety risk repairs posed to maintenance workers.
All Libya’s coastal towns are connected by undersea telecoms cables, several of which have been accidentally cut over the past two years by dredgers or fishing boats.
At the same time Libya Telecommunications and Technology (LTT) has rebuffed claims that it yesterday deliberately slowed internet connections to disrupt national protests. LTT said in a statement handed to the Libyan news agency LANA that the connections difficulty consumers had experienced was due to strain on the network which may have been due in part to a high volume of use related to yesterday’s demonstrations. [/restrict]
