The networks belonging to Golden Telecom Ltd. experienced a major breakdown on May 15, 2007, depriving the company’s users of Internet access. The alarming symptoms could be traced early on in the morning when the users’ connection kept going on and off. Then, the web became totally inaccessible at about noon. Golden Telecom was not able to explain what had caused the trouble; nor did the company announce how long it was going to take to fix the problem.