[kictanet] Undersea cable cut disrupts Mideast and India communications

[S.Murigi Muraya]

Happy New Year to KICTANET

We need at least 5 undersea fiber optic cables connecting us (on 
different routes) to the rest of the world. Trust that our government 
requires cable companies to involve and educate Kenyan telecom engineers 
in the installation and repair of any cable Kenya.go.ke owns a part of.

http://telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/print.asp?ID=AR_4670

*Undersea cable cut disrupts Mideast and India communications (Summarized)*

by Kendrick Struthers-Watson

Mon. December 22, 2008

A French cable ship, the CS Raymond Croze, has begun repairing two badly 
damaged cables in the Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, Dec. 
19, disrupting Internet and telephone communications. Sources indicate 
the cables were cut within five minutes of each other, possibly by a 
trawler net. A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the 
sea bed and bring them to the surface to be reconnected.

This is not the first time there's been trouble along these cable 
routes. Last January, two of the three cables connecting Europe with 
Asia via the Middle East were cut. What is more pressing about the 
current situation is that all three cables were affected.

Until these cables are fixed, service providers in the Middle East and 
South Asia must route their European traffic through Southeast Asia and 
across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Despite the problems these cable cuts have caused, Alan Mauldin, 
Research Director for Telegeography, believes that new cable 
construction should help prevent future outages. "Many new cable systems 
are slated to enter service between Europe and Egypt in the next few 
years, including Telecom Egypt's TE North cable, Orascom's MENA system, 
FLAG's HAWK cable, the IMEWE consortium cable, and the EIG consortium 
cable," he said.

Mauldin added that while constructing multiple cables does not guarantee 
against outages, the introduction of these new systems will provide 
additional routing options and improve resiliency.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20090101/b2c58f25/attachment.htm>