Vietnam's internet again in trouble as three of five submarine cables go down

Internet connectivity between Vietnam and the rest of the globe has degraded yet again after three of the five submarine internet cables failed around June 15 and remain down. This outage has "significantly affected Vietnam's internet connection with the world" and made some offshore websites hard to access, state media organ …

[trindflo]

"ships damaging cables"

Ships damaging cables...is that the same as trawling with an anchor? The article indicates this damage doesn't seem intentional, but I'm not seeing how a ship destroys a cable like that without incompetence levels that seem like intent followed by 'oops, my bad'. This has to be done by large ships, which as I understand would be sounding alarms if the anchor is down when it shouldn't be. What am I missing?

[Version 1.0]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

A ship waiting overnight will normally drop an anchor and then startup the next day and pull up the anchor once it's started moving, while fishing ships may pull their nets along to try and collect fish and crabs etc. So it's likely to have been just accidental work.

The internet was originally designed to survive damage results like this so a few other cables will help for a while.

[NoneSuch]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

Should be Chinese ships damaging cables. I'll bet those three cables go through the South China Sea area China claims as theirs, but really isn't.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

This. Those undersea lines bypass China's land lines.

It's been a long time since I've visited VN, but it was nearly impossible to get encryption working on any connections that went through China at the time. There was always a cert/key mismatch.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

Don't dismiss simple incompetence. I used to know a guy who did a lot of work on shipboard electrics. He was friends with a number of tug and bunkering captains working in Dover. They, and the Dover harbour master were pretty contemptuous of the crews of many incoming ships.

[cyberdemon]

> Don't dismiss simple incompetence

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

[hedgie]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

And never forget Grey's Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

[lglethal]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

Deep Sea Trawlers basically throw massive nets over the back with weights that are designed to drag along the bottom of the ocean floor, dredging up everything and anything on the way, and massively damaging the sea floor (and any cables they come across). So whilst the location of Cables are marked, and there are supposed to be no go areas for such things, never underestimate the stupidity and greed of a fishing fleet captain.

If the Sonar says there's a large school of fish down there in the no-go area. You better believe they are still going to go through there. Cables be damned...

[tiggity]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

Indeed, & its not unusual for trawlers to turn off their transponders if they are planning on entering illegal areas, be it cable locations, marine protection (no fishing) areas etc.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: "ships damaging cables"

On the other hand, I recall being told about an incident in the UK's naval sound range - a stretch of water heavily instrumented with hydrophones where vessels are taken to assess their emanations. When the trawler captain denied having been through there and dredging up "significant amounts of equipment", they were able to tell him exactly where he'd been, what shaft revs he was using, and show his acoustic signature exactly matched. I suspect that was expensive for him.

[Henry Wertz 1]

port

I'm guessing if they took out 3 at once, that it's probably one of those deal where the fiber all hooks to land at a port; and the ships dock nearby. I recall years ago about a few countries planning to reroute their fiber a bit so it wouldn't make landfall so close to where the ships do. But I imagine in quite a few cases this hasn't been done yet.