Rush to Fix Quake-Damaged Undersea Cables
Asia’s major telecom operators scrambled Monday to eliminate the impact on their operations from damage to several submarine cables following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Many operators were reporting some disruptions in Internet access, though the partial restoration of service was accomplished by rerouting traffic over undamaged cables and via satellites.
About half of the existing cables running across the Pacific are damaged and “a lot of people are feeling a little bit of slowing down of Internet traffic going to the United States,” said Bill Barney, chief executive of Hong Kong-based cable-network operator Pacnet.
