Phone firms rush to mend undersea cable

Phone firms rush to mend undersea cable

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Telephone companies from Singapore and Indonesia scrambled on Tuesday to repair a break in an undersea telecommunications cable that led to major Internet traffic jams for millions of users across the globe.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd said it had dispatched a cable ship to repair the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable, which was cut between Singapore and Jakarta.

The 38,000 km (23,600 miles) cable links Australia, Asia and Europe and is one of the world's busiest Internet cables.

The cause of the damage was unknown, but possibilities include a ship's anchor or earthquake.

"We still don't know what caused the cut and it's part of the international cable...through 33 countries," said a spokesman for Telstra Corp Ltd, Australia's biggest Internet provider, which lost 65 percent of its international capacity on Monday.

"We have been told that it has impacted Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, the UK and United States at least and possibly other countries as well," he added.

SingTel, which is coordinating repair efforts with Indonesian international telecommunications operator Indosat, said its own traffic to Australia had not been disrupted.

"We've re-routed traffic since the damage occurred," a spokesman for the Singaporean company said.

Telstra, with more than 650,000 customers, relies on the cable for around 60 percent of its traffic.

It posted a notice on its website warning customers of long delays due to the disruption to its "Australian backbone".

Telstra said its Big Pond network was virtually closed down overnight, but had since been able to re-route traffic and was now operating at 75 percent capacity.

Telstra said delays were to be expected during peak traffic times on international connections from Australia.

It said it would take a number of days to repair the cable.

SingTel said the cable is owned by a consortium of more than 40 parties, including Telstra, SingTel, Indosat, Hong Kong Telecom, British Telecommunications Plc and France Telecom among others.