SANAA, Yemen — Maher al-Hammadi stands outside his two-story internet cafe just near the Sanaa University around 1 p.m. On an average day, it is right when the Sunset Cafe is filled with students — but not on Jan. 14, the sixth day of the internet outage since the severing of a submarine cable last week.

"Primetime for my customers is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.," Hammadi told Al-Monitor, pointing with frustration at half a dozen people in the cafe.

He explained that ever since last week, his clients fall into two categories: those who leave immediately when he tells them that the internet connection is slow and those who try to get online anyway, wait patiently for a while, then storm off, resigned and angry.

Right then, Ahlam al-Jabali, a business management graduate, comes down from the second floor of the cafe, the area allocated to women and separated with a curtain. She explained to Al-Monitor that she is working on a film that will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival and that she needs the internet for her work. She is accompanied by two of her relatives, as her family would not allow her to go without a chaperone to an internet cafe, a venue that is still frowned upon by conservatives.