Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Internet and telephone communications across the Middle East and India were disrupted after two submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea were cut.

Six ships were diverted from Alexandria port and one may have severed the cables with an anchor, said a spokesman for Flag Telecom Group Ltd., which operates one of the cables. The incident took place 8.3 kilometers (5.2 miles) from Alexandria beach in northern Egypt, the spokesman, who asked not to be named, said in an interview from Mumbai, India.

India and countries across the Middle East experienced slow Internet connections and problems making international calls to the U.S. and Europe, the spokesman said. The break will take 12 to 15 days to fix, he said.

``It's a national disaster,'' said Joseph Metry, network supervisor at Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the biggest mobile- phone company in the Middle East and North Africa. The problem is affecting all Egyptian Internet users, Metry said in a phone interview from Cairo. The ships were diverted because of bad weather yesterday, he said.

Yesterday's bad weather conditions were felt in bordering Israel today, where public transportation, schools and most businesses in Jerusalem shut down, leaving the streets empty of traffic as the city braced for as much as 20 centimeters (8 inches) of snow.

Rerouting Traffic

Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., the United Arab Emirates' second-biggest mobile-phone company, is working with the cable operators, Flag Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4, to find out why the cables were cut and to determine when service can be restored, the company, known as du, said in an e-mailed release.

``In the meantime, du has already started transferring Internet and international voice traffic through other cable systems that have not been affected, although some congestion may be expected at peak times until this issue is resolved,'' the company said in the statement.

Customers of AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. phone company, have been affected, spokesman Michael Coe said. While the company is rerouting its clients' traffic, it anticipates congestion since other carriers are doing the same thing, he said. He didn't know how many customers were affected.

San Antonio-based AT&T is part of the group that owns the cable, Coe said. AT&T had $4.7 billion in corporate sales last quarter, or 27 percent of total revenue.

Repair Costs

Verizon Communications Inc., the second-biggest U.S. phone company, said some customers have been affected by the cable break. The New York-based company is switching those clients to other network routes, said Verizon spokeswoman Linda Laughlin.

Verizon also co-owns the cable as part of a group with several other carriers, and the companies pay regular maintenance fees that will cover the cost to repair the cable, Laughlin said. She said she didn't know how many clients were affected.

``We'll try to move customers over as soon as we can,'' she said. While it's rare for undersea fiber cables to break, they can come apart when geographic faults move, Laughlin said.

Verizon's corporate sales unit, which provides phone and Internet service to multinational corporations, had sales of $5.4 billion last quarter, or about 23 percent of overall revenue.

`Degraded Speed'

Bahrain Telecommunications Co., which holds the franchise to provide all of Bahrain's public telecommunications, said in an e- mailed statement that ``Internet services will still be available but at a degraded speed during peak hours.''

Batelco, as the company is known, advised customers to give more priority to applications such as browsing and e-mail, which consume less bandwidth than actions such as file sharing.

``The interruption in the service is beyond Batelco's control but repair work is already under way by the providers and it is anticipated that full services will be resumed soon,'' Batelco Corporate Affairs General Manager Ahmed Al Janahi said in the statement.

Egypt's Ministry of Telecommunications ``has formed an emergency team to bring back the service quickly through several alternative paths such as the Suez Canal and satellite links,'' according to a statement broadcast on Egyptian television.

The cables are not easily broken so there must have been a ``huge hit,'' Orascom's Metry said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Camilla Hall in London at chall24@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 30, 2008 12:18 EST