The China-US submarine cable failure blamed for causing the second major Internet traffic jam across the Pacific in less than a month was actually severed, presumably by fishing trawlers, Chunghwa Telecom (
"The area where the cable broke, near Chongmingdao (崇明島) island, off the coast of China, is a heavily fished area," said Wang Hsiao-ping (王筱屏), an engineer at Chunghwa Telecom's Internet network management division.
Although Chunghwa officials could not speculate on how long it would take to fully repair the China-US undersea cable, one industry insider said it might take up to 20 days. Chinese officials have already dispatched the same undersea cable firm from Japan that made repairs last month.
On Feb. 9, an electrical malfunction caused over 26 million Internet users throughout Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and other nations in Asia to lose access to Web sites based in the US. Officials who had dusted off their Internet cable back-up plans at the time were ready to move into action when the Net outage hit last Friday.
Chunghwa Telecom rerouted Net service through an undersea cable connecting Taiwan to Japan and restored full service within 6 hours of the China-US undersea cable severance. The February outage took days to get full service running again.
"What this highlights is ... simply the lack of [submarine cables] that exist in certain markets, like Taiwan, and how dependant that supply is on single systems," said Steve Liddell, CEO of Level 3 Asia Communications, an undersea cable operator.
Ideally, what a country needs is a number of different submarine cables in and out of that location to offset the chances a cable severance will lead to an Internet or communications blackout, explained Liddell. He said the new model for laying submarine cable is to use a ring architecture, whereby the system loops around to connect at two points, like a circle, so that if one side is cut, traffic automatically reroutes in the opposite direction.
"Cables break, there's no doubt about it," said Liddell, but certain precautions can prevent fishermen and undersea cables from tangling with one another.
Undersea cables should be landed away from the heavily fished areas, "particularly away from the shallow, coastal waters where the China-US cable has broken a number of times," he said. Secondly companies should bury the cable under the ocean floor in shallow water areas, as "the landing site is critical."
He said some of the new undersea cables being laid around Taiwan are in heavily fished areas, giving rise to concerns the nation's growing Internet and broadband traffic could experience major disruptions in the future.
Currently, only two cables carry the bulk of Internet and telecommunications traffic across the Pacific to the US West coast, but a number of firms are busy rectifying the situation. SingTel, Level 3 Asia and others are building a new network to ensure smooth, uninterrupted service to Asia.
The fantastic growth in Internet traffic made these new cable systems necessary as long as five years ago, but deregulation of local telecommunications industries really spurred interest in the region by worldwide undersea cable firms.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS