This came at a really inconvenient time -- my 7-year-old niece has been in the hospital with some mysterious ailment, and the Internet is the main way I communicate with my family, so I've been going a little crazy for lack of Skype. :-(
Fortunately, I heard this morning that she's recovering nicely and has been released from the hospital. She should be back in school on Monday. (Fingers crossed.)
In fact it has been a TV news item here today so you're not completely forgotten.
as for the conspiracy theory, these cables get cut all the time. (If egyptian telecom are anything Like BT, I've had major site fibre optic cables cut by a BT crew and used as a pull-through for new phone lines they were installing!)
I've also had a complete site failure when the site we linked too to provide our internet connection had builders put a JCB bucket through the site cables and black out half of Wales educational network for three days. and that was a relatively small cable. Fixing these things are somewhat tricky, especially under a depth of water. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Yes, India, where more and more of the back office work for bankers, insurers, software companies, you name it, is being processed. So now, this is not funny anymore: we're talking real money here. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.