Asia's internet in peril as cable network breaks in TWO places

Asia Pacific’s internet traffic is likely to be up the spout until mid-April after a key pan-regional undersea cable system suffered damage in two places. The news was revealed on the Facebook page of Asian telco giant the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (via TechInAsia). It said that the Asia Pacific Cable Network …

[Anonymous Coward]

rebate?

Pah. Refund.

[Anonymous Coward]

cut in two places?

How the hell do you do that? Did someone pick it up by the middle and yank it loose at both ends?

Surely they didn't just patch it with LC connectors last time?

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: cut in two places?

"yank it loose at both ends" - Possibly. I'll let you know if I see any fishing boats with a thousand miles of cable trailing behind them, and a red-faced captain. But I might need to revert to other communications methods (see icon).

[JaitcH]

Re: cut in two places?

These cables don't just lie on the sea bed, they are ploughed under but currents can remove the covering.

[Graham 24]

Re: cut in two places?

It's easy to explain - two governments were both placing taps on the cable at the same time...

[g e]

Re: cut in two places?

Ingress and Egress

to the NSA, natch

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cut in two places?

Local Truth OUT

US Government Approved truth IN.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plane?

Check to see if a plane landed on it?

[Anonymous Coward]

expensive

$500M for 2 pairs, maybe they're thinner cables than normal and more susceptable to damage. It's not a cable either, it's 16 sections if you include the extension to Aus.

[martin 62]

here ya go

take a look here and you can see all the under sea fiber optic cables: http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

[DropBear]

Curses! The bloody sharks with lasers strike again!

[yoganmahew]

They shouldn't have lined the cable with blue smarties...

[Bunbury]

It's a shallow sea off a heavily populated area so big ships dragging cables will be a big risk.

I recall though when the first optical transatlantic cable was being laid in (?) 1984 it used fancy optical repeaters that were 2 metres long and cost £1m each. Unfortunately, they also emitted something (presumably some form of electrically created signal?) that said to sharks "lunch". CHOMP. Err, let's change the design chaps.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we now know where MH370 crashed. :-/

[JaitcH]

Twas the Friday before Christmas when ...

the Malaysia / Singapore / VietNam undersea fibre optic cable was cut by NSA / GCHQ / or a fishing boat trawling (at 400 feet?).

Since all 3 cable repair ships were tied up in Manila for the Christmas/New Years break we suffered from international InterNet speeds resembling molasses on a winters day.

Sometime in January they 'patched' it intending to do a full repair in March - which undoubtedly explains the intermittent service we have been experiencing recently.

Never ones to miss an opportunity, Vietnamese fisher people managed to damage the spur feed from the aforementioned cable to Da Nang in the centre of the country.

VietNam has a 5 terrabyte land link from Ha Noi, through LangSon, across the Chinese border terminating in HongKong but, due to differences between VietNam and China over the Spratly Islands, this link has been down 'for repairs'.

[Anonymous Coward]

"fibre breaks"

I had one of those today - ate a bran muffin...

['China Telecom Global']

Terrestrial Cables the better option for IT Teams...

A good lesson to be had here, 'cheaper' sea cables means far more aggravation to networks, whether 99.999% required or not, buy several cheap sea cables and expect far more troubles in the future..

Take a look at 'terrestrial' fully redundant SDH networks as your primary use a sea as your back up !!!