AT&T 9 Hour Network Outage cripples AT&T Mobile Data Traffic
Beginning at around 5:30 EST on Thursday, AT&T’s EDGE and UMTS data networks went down for reasons even now unknown to company technicians.
AT&T has not reported what the cause of the outage was, or even how many customers were affected. Message boards tracking user complaints counted 18 states among those suffering from lost 2.5/3G connectivity.
Blackberry & iPhone users yesterday received “data connection refused” & “Could not activate EDGE” alert. Voice traffic seemed to be OK.
At this point the cause of the outage is not known but it could related to the major disruption of Internet service due to snapped submarine cables
in the Middle East, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday. The third cable was cut off today and apparently isolates Iran from the Internet cloud.
The first cable – the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) – was cut at 0800 on 30 January 
A second cable thought to lie alongside it – SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable – was also split.
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 meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research 
firm TeleGeography.
INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE
1 Polyethylene cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres
Not to scale
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