Egypt says Internet back to normal in 10 days

CAIRO (Reuters) - Internet services in Egypt will not be restored to normal for at least 10 days after two undersea cables were cut earlier this week, causing severe disruptions, the telecommunications ministry said on Saturday.

The cable cuts near Egypt disrupted Web access in parts of the Middle East and Asia.

The ministry said it expected work to repair the cables in the Mediterranean Sea to start on Tuesday and take several days.

"Thus, the disorder in the Internet network would continue for a period that may not be less than 10 days," it said in a statement.

Egypt said about 55 percent of its Internet capacity had been restored. "This is expected to increase gradually," the statement added.

Telecommunications Minister Tarek Kamel said on Thursday it would take at least a week to fix the breaches, which are in segments of two intercontinental cables known as SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG.

It was not immediately possible to gauge the impact of the disruption on financial institutions. The Egyptian stock market said the incident had no effect on trading, the Al-Alam al-Youm financial day newspaper reported on Saturday.

Last week some traders said transactions had been slower and that several international trading orders failed to go through. The central bank expressed its frustration with the service and said it would seek alternatives for the banking system if similar disruptions were to happen again.

Egypt has said it did not know if the cables were cut because of bad weather. Storms forced the country to close the northern entrance of the Suez Canal on Tuesday.