The earthquakes that hit Taiwan on Tuesday rocked communications in Asia and underscored the vulnerabilities of a system where huge amounts of data speed through the region in cables laid deep beneath the sea.
An unbelievable amount of information is passed through undersea cables:
Undersea fiber-optic cables account for more than 95 percent of international telecommunications thanks to their strength, capacity and connection quality, according to South Korean provider KT Submarine Corp.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
International phone service was cut off or restricted in some regions, and Internet service slowed to a crawl in much of China after the magnitude 6.7 temblor struck late Tuesday, damaging as many as eight undersea cables. Service to BlackBerry financial-information terminals was interrupted, and currency and financial markets were disrupted.
Earthquakes aren’t the only problem afflicting undersea cables; they can be damaged by fishing nets and ship anchors.
They can also be intentionally damaged.
Back in the mid-seventies an Air Force communications specialist once told me that Soviet ships routinely would drag their anchors to damage undersea cables. I suspect terrorists are also now taking note of the situation. The best deterent is to continue to increase the number of redundant systems. For instance, from the Wall Street Journal Article:
Verizon alone has six cable routes that connect the U.S. and Europe, forming a "mesh" network that can restore multiple cable paths in milliseconds in case of a cut line. "The more cable paths you have, the more survivability you'll have," says Ihab Tarazi, vice president of global network operations and technology at Verizon of New York.
First posted at UNCoRRELATED
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