Repairing cable still going

by Dr Mohamed b. Awang Lah

Saturday, 06 January 2007 10:11 AM

In any crisis such as the current one, we always look forward to receive frequent updates from the service providers or cable operators. We can see clearly who are actually caring and responsive and who could not care less. After eight (8) days, one service provider is still checking the agreement to find out whether or not certain circuit is supposed to be restored! Many similar operators prefer to keep mum and compel everyone to play the guessing game on the work progress. Fortunately, at least one operator never fails to give daily updates. It gives detailed description (including names) of the ships being dispatched to the affected site and the estimated time for every step of the restoration process. One ship actually encountered problem while attempting to repair a cable. The ship itself has to be repaired first – causing more delay to the restoration job. Anyway, I wish service providers in Malaysia emulate such culture of transparency. At this point we know that at least eight (8) major cables have been damaged caused by the earthquake. These are: APCN – Asia Pacific Cable Network – 10 Gbps APCN2 (2 faults) – 160 Gbps (maximum 2.56 Tbps) FNAL (2 faults) – FLAG North Asia Loop – 160 Gbps (maximum 2.4 Tbps) FEA – FLAG Europe Asia – 10 Gbps China-US (2 faults) – 80 Gbps EAC (4 faults) – East Asia Crossing – 120 Gbps SMW3 (2 faults) – South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe – 70 Gbps C2C (3 faults) – 160 Gbps (maximum 7.68 Tbps) (Gbps = gigabits per second, Tbps = terabits per second) Many ships are involved in the restoration works. The estimated dates to restore differ for different cables starting from 7 January 2007. So far the best estimate for a complete restoration of the damaged cables is mid February 2007. JARING service is now running at approximately 70% of the normal capacity. As optimisation is being done, we see continuous improvement by each day. Full recovery is expected by mid January. We are grateful for the patience shown by our subscribers and we thank them for their understanding for bearing with us during this trying moment. Dr Mohamed b. Awang Lah is the Chief Executive Officer of Jaring