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Broken cable causes headaches for Asian telcos

HONG KONG (CNN) -- Some Asian Internet links will be disrupted for about a week while international telecommunications carriers scramble to repair a $U.S.1 billion cable that was severed beneath the sea on Monday.

The "tension break" in the 39,000 kilometer long SEA-ME-WE 3 cable illustrated the fragility of Asia's Internet links. It carries Internet and voice messages through 39 countries in the region and runs through to the Middle East and Europe.

Worst-hit was Australia's largest retail Internet access provider, Telstra, which is also the country's largest telco. At the time, Telstra, home for 500,000 dial-up Internet subscribers, was routing half its traffic through the cable.

In the aftermath of the break, massive volumes of online traffic were diverted to other cables, causing a gridlock that effectively halted all online communications. The disruption lasted several hours.

Elsewhere in Asia there were fewer reports of problems, although some delays and slowdowns in connections speeds were considered inevitable. The cable connects Internet service providers via 33 landing points in key markets including Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.

Singapore Telecom corporate communications director Ivan Tan says there may have been some brief disruptions to the company's Internet service, but because the break occurred late in the day, delays were minimized.

"We don't use that cable exclusively, we have alternative routes and also satellite. We have no record of any disturbances," Tan says.

Singtel and Indosat of Indonesia are overseeing repair efforts, having dispatched a cable ship to the area.

The SEA-ME-WE 3 cable is 46mm in diameter and protected by two layers of steel mesh. It is owned by a consortium of 92 global telecommunications operators and has been in operation for about 12 months.

Telstra spokesman Stuart Gray says excessive tension caused the break, suggesting it may have been snagged by a ship's anchor or sand dredge in busy shipping lanes 63 km south of Singapore.

Telstra's capacity to carry Internet data has dropped to about 75 per cent as a result of the break. But that was sufficient, according to Gray, to handle "the normal amount of traffic".

Coincidentally, Telstra has moved to bolster Asia's internet capacity through a multi-billion dollar Internet protocol backbone joint venture with Richard Li's Hong Kong-based Pacific Century CyberWorks.

A spokeswoman for Pacific Century CyberWorks, which operates internet services through its subsidiary Cable & Wireless HKT, reported that because of automatic back-up systems there had been no disruption to its services.

ASIANOW


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