Internet cable between Taiwan and US severed again

Trouble with an undersea cable linking Asia to the US West Coast disrupted Taiwan's Internet service for the second time in a month, but according to officials at Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信), data is again flowing freely.

Internet service throughout Taiwan began faltering on Friday at around 8pm after the cable failed near China's Chongmingdao (崇明島) island, off the coast of Shanghai.

Though workers from China Telecommunications Co have reportedly fixed the undersea cable, people are beginning to wonder what's going on.

"It's very unusual for this kind of thing to happen twice," said Chen Kwang-cheng (陳光禎), a professor at National Taiwan University's Graduate Department of Telecommunications (台大電信所).

On Feb. 9, exactly one month ago, Internet service throughout the region, including Taiwan, was cut due to a malfunction in the undersea cable's electric system.

The power is carried to repeater stations that amplify the light level in the fiber-optic strands to enable data to be carried over vast distances.

Net traffic was quickly restored this time, by 1:30am Saturday morning, after data was re-routed via an emergency backup cable between Taiwan and Japan.

Put into service in January last year, the twice-damaged submarine cable -- dubbed `CN' due to its final connecting point from China to the US -- is part of a pan-Asian network built by 10 companies and 15 telecommunications firms.

The cable follows a web-like pattern hooking Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan to a final link near Shanghai, which then crosses the Pacific Ocean to the US West Coast.

Although the undersea cable does carry some ATM and other telecommunications traffic, it predominantly carries Internet data between Asia and the US.

No answer has yet been provided as to how or why this kind of cable -- which is made of fiber-optic strands sheathed in plastic and steel-armor to prevent accidental damage -- could exhibit the same failure twice within a month.

Officials speculate that the same underlying problem was responsible for both outages, but have refused to give any more details than a suspected fault in the electrical system. Fishing boats have been known to sever undersea cables, but officials at Chunghwa Telecom say they won't know the exact cause for another few days.