LIRNEasia » Mediterranean

Three Mediterranean cables out: Maldives connectivity down 100%?

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 05:43:26 +0000

Undersea cable operators have a nasty habit of laying cables close to each other. When they get cut, they tend to go in sets. The first question I have is why Maldives would lose 100% of traffic when it is connected by two undersea cables, one to Colombo and the other to India. That’s serious redundancy, especially for a tiny country of 300,000+ people. I can understand the traffic on Reliance’s Flag system going down because it was Atlantic focused. But most of Sri Lanka’s Internet traffic runs west via the Pacific. The very fact that I am posting this is evidence that Sri Lanka’s connectivity to the US is unaffected.

So it is possible that Dhiraagu was unaffected. Can readers from the Maldives shed some light on what actually happened. Second mystery is why Taiwan is affected from a Mediterranean cable cut, when it is practically the gateway for the Pacific cables.

Most business-to-business traffic between Europe and Asia was being rerouted through the United States, the firm said, but regular communications between Europe and several Asian countries has been disrupted since early Friday.

Sixty-five per cent of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan were also severely affected, a spokesman said Friday evening.

An afternoon toll released by France Telecom said that 100 percent of traffic was lost in the Maldives Indian Ocean islands, with the Gulf state of Qatar and Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden, also losing over 70 percent of their traffic.

The full story from LBO.

Need for redundancy highlighted again

Rohan Samarajiva — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:01:28 +0000

Indian outsourcing sector hit by Internet disruption – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE

India’s vital outsourcing industry, which relies heavily on the Internet, was grappling with a major communications disruption Thursday after damage to undersea cables thousands of kilometres away in the Mediterranean.

Internet connections may take up to 15 days to return to normal, businesses said, adding that telecommunications in neighbouring Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were also affected.

FLAG to invest $1.5 billion on new submarine cable network

Divakar Goswami — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 08:18:38 +0000

FLAG Telecom plans to deploy the largest IP-based submarine cable network that will connect 60 countries, including many that currently have poor connectivity by 2009. India, Indonesia, and Philippines are among the countries that FLAG’s NGN network will have a presence in.
Reliance to carry FLAG far and wide:

“We live in a world where there is too much of bandwidth for some, little for others and none for many – there is unequal access to bandwidth in and across countries, continents and communities,” said Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, chairman, Reliance Communications. “FLAG NGN will democratise digital access,” he added.

FLAG NGN will comprise of our systems. FLAG NGN System 1 would cover Asia that includes India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Honk Kong. FLAG NGN System 2 would be for Africa covering Kenya, Mozambique, Republic of South Africa, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mauritius.

FLAG NGN System 3 will cater to the Mediterranean region, including Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Malta, Libya and Lebanon. And the Trans-Pacific region, including the US West Coast, Japan, China and Hong Kong, would be covered by FLAG NGN System 4.